Imagine taking 6-20 plates of food and dumping them in the trash, perfectly fresh and edible. Off they go to the landfill. Obviously, none of us would behave so wastefully.
And yet that’s precisely the effect each time any of us consumes meat, since the vast majority of the calories consumed by a chicken, pig, or [...]
The Sacramento Bee weighs in with an editorial:
If it wins final approval, the eye-popping $2.25 billion penalty that the California Public Utility Commission’s Safety and Enforcement Division has recommended against Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will be the largest ever imposed against a utility in the United States.
PG&E officials predictably complained that it is excessive. [...]
As a cadre of Google executives took turns touting Google’s newest products at a conference in California on Wednesday, they also described how they were working toward a future in which technology would disappear.
That might sound like a bizarre mission for a tech company. Yet they promised that by fading into the background of our lives, technology [...]
Fish Creek Monitor remembers a favorite chicken and reflects on life near a fracking well:
Rest in Peace Maisy
March 11, 2008 – May 14, 2013
Our first baby chicks. (March 2008)
The chick on the left is a Buff Orpington. After researching various chicken breeds, we selected her because we read that they have docile temperaments and are [...]
The reprieve in the fire danger is welcome, north and south, but we’re in for it nonetheless, especially those of us who live in the heavily wooded high country, between the flatlands and the timberline. The merry month of May has barely begun, but it doesn’t feel so merry up here where the smoke hung [...]
I was very excited to read, last week, about the “ghost money” that the C.I.A. is paying to the president of my country, Hamid Karzai. I’d like to know: would it be possible for the C.I.A. to give me some, too?
We do not know what President Karzai has done with this cash that arrives each month in [...]
It’s rare for privileged Westerners to see, graphically, what many others experience daily – for example, in a remote village in Yemen, the same week as the marathon bombings.
On April 23, Yemeni activist and journalist Farea Al-Muslimi, who had studied at an American high school, testified before a US Senate committee that right after the [...]
Late last week, a draft government rule that will remove Endangered Species Act protections for wolves across most of the lower 48 states was leaked to the press.
If it’s enacted, this rule will put a tragic end to one of the most important wildlife recovery stories in America’s history.
Wolves today wander just 5 percent of their [...]
But there appears to be an overarching problem in execution, which suggests a reluctance to deviate from the status quo and create the space for genuine environmental leadership and innovation.
Take for example the burst of activity and debate sparked by recent media reports that Alberta was considering strengthening its approach to managing greenhouse gas pollution. [...]
Industrialized animal agribusiness is facing a crisis, and its leaders, having failed to accept that factory farming practices are actually at the root of the problem, are frantically looking in every direction for quick fixes. While they procrastinate, they are only digging a deeper hole for themselves.
Stunned by repeated whistleblowing exposés revealing inhumane treatment of [...]
As we celebrate “Earth Week” (its too important for just one day), I can’t help but think about how technology both helps and harms our environment.
On the positive side, tech is helping cut down on the use of some resources. Reading newspapers and documents on screens means chopping down fewer trees for paper. Using email [...]
“Wrong. Things like this happen everywhere. All over the world. It is nothing new. But it’s not just bombs that kill. It’s guns. It’s war. It’s greed. It’s hatred. Hatred is what killed those three people on Monday. Hatred is what killed nearly 3,000 people on 9/11. It was hatred that killed nearly one million [...]
Truthout talks to Ozzie Zehner about Green Illusions:
Every day, the news about climate change and the harms that are sure to accompany it gets worse and worse. To many environmentalists, the answer is simple: power shift. That is, shift from fossil fuels to clean, green, renewable, alternative energy. Well-meaning concerned citizens and activists have jumped [...]
The notion of “externalities” has become familiar in environmental circles. It refers to costs imposed by businesses that are not paid for by those businesses. For instance, industrial processes can put pollutants in the air that increase public health costs, but the public, not the polluting businesses, picks up the tab. In this way, businesses [...]
The St. Johns River Water Management District just finished its latest scientific assessment of Silver Springs and the Silver River — a “minimum flows and levels” study aimed at determining just how low the springs/river level could go before experiencing significant environmental harm. It is an important and useful measure of the springs’ and river’s [...]
Solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power utilities and burn the utility business model, which has remained virtually unchanged for a century, to the ground.
So, just a bit of background. You probably know that electricity is provided by utilities. Some utilities both generate electricity at power plants and provide [...]
Ag Industry Caught in Legislative Embarrassment: Not the Way A Democracy Should Work
Posted: 14 Apr 2013 09:00 AM PDT By Susan Schneider of the University of Arkansas School of Law:
In late March, Congress was finally able to agree on budget legislation that would avoid a government shut down and provide funding for 6 months. The [...]
As renewable energy gets cheaper and machines and buildings become more energy efficient, a number of countries that two decades ago ran on a fuel mix much like America’s are successfully dialing down their fossil fuel habits. Thirteen countries got more than 30 percent of their electricity from renewable energy in 2011, according to the [...]
When I see raw tar sands coursing through people’s yards and across wetlands, it makes me sick. My thoughts are with the people in Arkansas who are dealing with this river of toxic mess. And my thoughts instantly move ahead to what could happen to farms, families, homes, and wild areas across our country if [...]
It’s time to start paying close attention to the mechanisms of the deregulation machine. For the past 30 years, the business lobbies have pushed Congress and the executive branch to disassemble the regulatory system that has protected us from the worst excesses of Wall Street and Big Business. The catastrophic effects of this dismantling are [...]
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