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If RFK Jr. Gave Birth Today, His Child Would Have Diminished IQ: The Link Between Coal And Mercury
“Would you please turn the lights up,” Robert F Kennedy Jr. asked the stage crew as he took the floor of New York’s Town Hall in Times Square, about to deliver an environmental lecture to a roaring full house this Tuesday. “I want to be able to see if people are leaving.” It was a joke, just the first of many for the evening, but the fact is that RFK, America’s most prominent environmental lawyer, Chief Prosecuting Attorney for Riverkeeper and Chairman of Read More
November 19, 2009 | In Environment
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Give a Little: Green Microgiving
Spare some change? This past Thursday, the New York Times ran a special section on giving, the big front page story of which was all about giving small. You know, small giving? Like little-ish donations in the $1 to $200 range, that people who aren’t Bill or Melinda Gates can make without breaking the bank. “After years in the shadows,” writes NYT’s Stephanie Strom, “the everyday donor is emerging as philanthropy’s newest hero, the driver of a more down-to-earth approach to char… Read More
November 17, 2009 | In Environment
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Waterless Clothes Washing. Almost.
What if you could clean a load of dirty clothes and linens with just a spoonful of laundry detergent and a single cup of water? As soon as late 2010, commercial laundry rooms in hotels, hospitals, and the like may have the option to save massive amounts of (increasingly expensive) water by switching over to a revolutionary new washing technology. A nearly waterless washing machine designed by a company called Xeros (Greek for “dry”) purportedly uses only 10% of the water sucked up by conventional machines. The rest of the dirty work is done by little “rice-sized nylon … Read More
November 13, 2009 | In Environment
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Carole King's Crusade To Protect The Rockies
Grammy-award winning singer Carole King has been raising her voice on the radio lately—not in song, this time, but in a plea for the Rocky Mountains. King hails from the mountains of Idaho; at the apex of her career, the Brooklyn native went looking for a place with fewer people and more space, and settled on a county in the center of the Gem State. She’s been active in the fight to preserve American northern wilderness ever since. Back in February of this ye… Read More
November 5, 2009 | In Environment
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UNFCCC Secretary De Boer Declares No Chance Of International Treaty At COP15
Just about a month remains before December’s culminating UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen (COP15) – the last five days of pre-COP15 talks are taking place this week in Barcelona. The hope, once, was that the over 190 participating nations would be ready by December to nail down the details of an international climate treaty (read: individual nations’ carbon cut targets, plus an agreement as to how much financial support developed nations will give developing nations for climate change adaptation). But Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Conv… Read More
November 4, 2009 | In Environment
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Americans Aren’t As Hot On Global Warming As They Once Were
Maybe it’s because the healthcare debate has been getting so hot lately. Maybe the battle cries generated by Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth are inconveniently echoing off into the distance. Maybe Americans are simply reeling from the recession, and don’t have time these days to worry about rising sea levels. Whatever it is, it seems that a lot of Americans are setting climate change to cool on the backburner. A sobering study released last week by The Pew Research Center suggests that Americans are less conc… Read More
November 1, 2009 | In Environment
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In Rush To COP15, Scrappy Senate Hearings On Kerry-Boxer Climate Bill
Today was the last of three days of hearings this week on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (CEJAPA), introduced by John Kerry (D-Mass) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif) on September 30th. But the seven Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee haven’t been playing fair so far – or playing at all. They’ve tried to hold the process in abeyance by insisting the EPA conduct a five-week economic analysis of the bil… Read More
October 29, 2009 | In Environment
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Not Just Making Posters Anymore: World Rallies Around 350.org
The big news about yesterday’s extraordinary 350.org call for climate action, staged in more than 180 countries, was not that activists rallied in scuba gear underwater at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, or that soldiers in Afghanistan spelled out 350 with grain bags, or that Masai children sat in Kenya’s dry, red dust and spelled out 350 with their bodies to call attention to Africa’s struggle with drought. The big news was that the event made the news. Everyone from … Read More
October 25, 2009 | In Environment
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Green Media Takes Another Hit: Columbia University Environmental Journalism Program Suspended
Are you a writer with a green cause? Then you probably shouldn’t bother applying for Columbia University’s 2-year Earth & Environmental Science Journalism Master’s Degree (EESJ) this winter. It doesn’t exist anymore. After 14 years of turning out graduates who’ve gone on to write for Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, Nature Magazine, Scientific American, Plenty Magazine, OnEarth, The New York Times, Congressional Quarterly… Read More
October 23, 2009 | In Environment
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Get Up, Stand Up: International Day Of Climate Action, Oct 24
What’s better than mimosas with brunch, walks in the park, dinner and a movie, day tripping out of town, reading a good book, and any other fabulous thing you could possibly think to do on a Saturday? Saving humanity from itself, that’s what. Saturday, October 24, has been dubbed International Day of Climate Action by activist/author Bill McKibben, along with a phalanx of high-profile enviro groups (including Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace), and citizen treehuggers like yourself. So far, 4043 “actions” … Read More
October 20, 2009 | In Environment
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Genetic Engineering To Prevent Climate Warfare?
Food purists, proponents of family farming and sustainable grub, Big Ag haters, pregnant ladies, and anyone else who gives a damn what they put in their mouth, sound the alarms. Tucked away at the tail end of a piece on climate change induced warfare in this week’s Economist is a specious and rather immodest proposal. To paraphrase: Let’s plant lots of crops genetically engineered to survive heat and drought, so that we’ll always have plenty of grub for everyone, and won’t find ourselves in the middle of a nasty food fight (war) when climate ch… Read More
October 16, 2009 | In Environment
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South Korea And China Leave US In Dust On Green Stimulus Efforts
As if we needed it: More evidence that Asia’s leaving the US in the dust when it comes to the renewable energies and green tech we’ll need to survive tomorrow’s warmer world. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reported recently that of the 20 countries with the world’s largest economies, South Korea and China have invested the greatest percentages of their stimulus cash in green initiatives – 79 percent and 34 percent, respecti… Read More
October 12, 2009 | In Environment
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Not Nearly Enough Progress Made During Bangkok Climate Negotiations
Something doesn’t match up here. Obama was just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in part for integrating the American voice into the international climate conversation, yet the US is being blamed for holding the world back from reaching a climate change agreement. Two weeks of teeth-pulling climate negotiations wrapped up in Bangkok yesterday – they ended with delegates from developing countries actually walking out of meetings during the last fe… Read More
October 10, 2009 | In Environment
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Cruise Like You Care: Best And Worst Cruise Ship Lines
Cruise ships are, environmentally speaking, one of the very worst ways to travel. They suck up tons of energy both in and out of port, spew diesel particulate matter harmful to human health, and dump untreated or poorly treated sewage overboard into marine habitats. Yet Americans hop aboard in the millions – almost 10 million took cruises from North American ports last year. If you’re determined to cruise with the masses, check out this report card issued last month by Friends of the Earth. It’ll help you choose the lesser of evils. T… Read More
October 7, 2009 | In Environment
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Nano Silver Strife In The Netbook World
A blogstorm of concern is simmering in the booming netbook market, and it’s not about keyboard size or battery life. It’s about the potential health hazards of purportedly antimicrobial silver nano technology being sprayed on the keyboards of some of these uber portable laptops. Consumers are flocking to sites like Amazon and tech blogs with questions no one can seem to answer definitively: Is nano silver dangerous? Can it get in my body? Can it cause cancer? Read More
October 4, 2009 | In Environment
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Kerry-Boxer Bill Addresses Impacts of Climate Change on Mental and Behavioral Health
You’ve heard the hullaballoo about recent legislative steps toward a carbon market. To which John Kerry responded last week, of his new climate bill, with a defensive: "I don't know what 'cap and trade' means. I don't think the average American does. This is not a cap-and-trade bill, it's a pollution reduction bill" (E&E Daily, Sept. 25). Lo and behold, the bill in question – Read More
October 2, 2009 | In Environment
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While Senate Introduces Climate Bill, Author Ian McEwan Introduces Climate Fiction
John Kerry and Barbara Boxer’s new Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act is being trumpeted into the Senate this week. The act, stronger than the bill passed by the Congress in June (ACES), could create up to 1.9 million new jobs, make America energy independent, and combat climate change. Well worth your while, in other words, to take a minute out of your day to Read More
October 1, 2009 | In Environment
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Report Names Cell Phone Models Most Likely To Cause Glioma Brain Tumor
Can you hear me now? The Environmental Working Group (EWG) – a watchdog NGO run by an army of top scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers and computer programmers – released an alarming report this month on the serious risk your cell phone may pose to your health. Read More
September 28, 2009 | In Environment
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Growing Focus On Gender And Climate Change As COP15 Approaches
You already know that the world’s poor are being hit first and will suffer most as a result of climate change. Think Katrina, think flooding in Bangladesh, think desertification in Mali. What you may not know is that in many parts of the world women draw the shortest straw of all when it comes to the ramifications of climate change. In many developing countries, women are in charge not only of child rearing but also fetching firewood for cooking, walking (often hours a day) to collect water, and farming. So what happens as deforestation spreads in th… Read More
September 25, 2009 | In Environment
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Obama’s UN Address Tuesday Receives Mixed Reviews
Undecided as to whether Obama’s much-hyped address at yesterday’s UN climate change summit was groundbreaking or underwhelming? The reviews are rolling in – here’s what a few of the experts had to say. Read More
September 23, 2009 | In Environment
Tobin is an NYC-based freelance writer. She blogs for BigThink on sustainability, green policy, and environmental health.