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  • How green are Obama’s potential Supreme Court picks?

    Update: Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan hasn’t said much about her environmental views, but she has a solid record of supporting climate law. Here’s the full story on her green cred.   President Barack Obama is reportedly considering about 10 people to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, although popular consensus has quickly […]

  • The New Bottom Line

    As the economy begins to rebound, businesses are again focused on commodities that may be in short supply when manufacturing shifts back into high gear. Oil, refined fuels, steel, and electricity are among many things that may be harder to get or just harder to afford. But what about the one commodity that is needed […]

  • Ask Umbra on aluminum cans, the climate bill, and bathroom burdens

    Send your question to Umbra! UPDATE: Happy April Fools’ Day! Q. Dear Umbra, I just finished drinking a soda—actually, I still have a sip or two left but wanted to go ahead and email you, so I’d have an answer by the time I finish it. What should I do when the can is empty? […]

  • Ask Umbra dives deep with ocean advocate Sylvia Earle

    Water, water everywhere, but is it on the brink? Not if oceanographer Sylvia Earle has anything to do with it. Dearests, meet Ms. Earle, an aquanaut, author, and one of today’s greatest advocates of the ocean—also, I suspect, a direct descendant of Poseidon. (I’ve asked for funding from Grist for a DNA test to be […]

  • The changing threat to water: Global warming & World Water Day

    All regions of the world show an overall net negative impact of climate change on water resources and freshwater ecosystems. Today is World Water Day — a day established to recognize the importance of water to the nations and people of the world. Nearly one billion people around the world don’t have clean drinking water […]

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    ‘The Story of Bottled Water’ and big fun learning about water

    It’s World Water Day, which means there’s no better day to, um, pour yourself a glass of water and, uh, dive into our planet’s dismal water problems. Let’s not kids ourselves: If we’re going to learn about water use, we’re going to need snappy videos with animation and peppy music. There’s just no other way […]

  • A water commons clash in the coliseum

    The battle to preserve water as a common good takes to the Roman streets this weekend. As you turn on the tap to hydrate yourself today, please take a moment to think of our Italian colleagues fighting to overturn the water-privatizing Ronchi law.

  • Water and the War on Terror

    While leaders in Washington have been war-gaming the national security risks of climate change, they’ve only started to connect the dots to the closely related threats emanating from the growing crisis of global freshwater scarcity. At first blush, water and national security may not seem to be interlinked. But the reality, as narrated in my […]

  • EPA stands by as polluters ignore the Clean Water Act

    (iStockphoto)Another entry in the New York Times fantastic “Toxic Waters” series came out on Sunday. This latest one is about the slow but tragically effective weakening of the Clean Water Act: Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are […]