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I wasn't surprised when Michael Pollan politely declined my request that he recommend fast-food fare that greenies can order with a clear conscience. "The single most eco-friendly item at the average fast-food restaurant," he responded through his assistant, "is the tap water." At the risk of contradicting the...

I'm married.

That's the first time I've typed those words. It's been a long time coming, and it's a very good thing. I didn't always know that it would be. For some reason, I wrote in my college journal that I didn't think I'd ever do it. But these first...

Josie Maran has landed some of the world's most competitive modeling gigs: the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the Victoria's Secret catalog, and cover after cover of Glamour, Maxim, Self, and other...

No matter how you slice it, mainstream cheese is inefficient fare: Almost 10 pounds of milk are needed to make a typical 1-pound wheel. But you need not forsake your favorite Gouda. Just choose a brand that takes sustainability into account. I asked five experts to name their favorites.

JEFF...

Grain is as American as apple pie. So it's only natural that farmers who want to protect this land -- and its amber waves -- are growing it sustainably. Here are some of the best starchy staples, chosen by experts in the field. 

EVA LONGORIA, who plays the self-involved Gabrielle Solis on ABC's Desperate Housewives, takes on extracurricular projects that set her far apart from her shallow onscreen persona. Longoria is...

December 5 marks the beginning of the Sierra Club's Mercury Awareness Week. In anticipation of that, here are four ways to help you keep the toxic stuff out of your life.

The problem with most holiday presents is that they're just so . . . lifeless. Not these.

Think of them as Sea-Monkeys' more sophisticated cousins....

The ultimate cold-weather food comes in varieties that'll get you warm without steaming up the planet. I asked soup experts to recommend their favorites. 

Eric Larsen, 40, is the first person to have reached the South Pole, the North Pole and the summit of Mount Everest within the span of one year. He spent 48 days traversing Antarctica, 51 days trudging the Arctic and 45 days conquering Earth's highest peak before coming home to...

Rachel Dratch, best known for her Debbie Downer character on Saturday Night Live, recently volunteered her comedic talents for a televised public-service announcement. In it, she shows up in a woman's house to chastise her for running her...

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's well and fine to learn from a lecture. But rarely is a lecture life-changing.

Good professors know that discussing nature in the confines...

We asked dessert experts to recommend their favorite eco-friendly ice cream, so you can cool your palate and the planet at the same time.

Jewelry exists to make an aesthetic statement. But it can make an ethical statement too. That idea drove Katy and Philip Leakey (yes, of that prolific anthropology...

An ultramarathoner is someone who regularly runs races that make the standard 26.2-mile contest look like a morning jog. Scott Jurek, 37, is an ultra ultramarathoner....

The Tree of Life isn't exactly what its trailer suggests. Watch its marketing tool, and you get the idea that it's a poignant story about a young family with a heavy focus on the father-son dynamic. And it is. But it also isn't.

What you won't know from the preview is that you'll sweat through uncomfortably long stretches of natural-history footage that do nothing to move the story forward. We're talking meteors crashing, lava flowing, cells dividing, dinosaurs frolicking. Which sounds like it'd pique the interest of any nature lover, but instead, it kills the dramatic momentum.

Maybe writer-director Terrence Malick threw all that in to punch us with perspective: Nothing that happens in our little human worlds matters in the grand cosmic -- or even earthly -- scheme of things. He seems to imply that in the face of all this evolutionary rage, religion is a myth that we created to keep nature's chaos at bay.

The parenting styles of the film's alpha-male father (Brad Pitt, pitch-perfect in the role) and the hyper-feminine mother (Jessica Chastain) call to mind the old science-religion divide. Pitt's Texan character, in his 1950s manner, exudes survival-of-the-fittest crudeness, while Chastain captures the wide-eyed naïveté of faith. The husband totally dominates the wife -- as well as his three sons, who struggle with their contrasting influences.

Critics, too, are polarized. They've called the film everything from a prolonged screensaver to a sublime rumination. It got booed at Cannes but won the Palme d'Or. We get the sense that Malick cares less about serving up cinematic catharsis than about exerting his intellectual and creative power.

While the whole thing smells strongly of art-house indulgence, it does give us superb acting, beautiful vignettes of family life, and rich symbolism. In one scene, a truck sprays out clouds of DDT as children run happily into the toxic fog. Maybe an allegory for how our youth enter so eagerly into destructiveness. Maybe not. It's hard to tell.

If you plan on seeing this one, go into it knowing that the plot is flimsy at best. You can avoid frustration by being wide open to the experience that Malick, from his godlike perch, has created for you -- or by waiting for the DVD, so you can fast-forward through the slow parts.

Most gardeners feel confident nurturing backyard mainstays like tomatoes, lettuce, and rosemary but get intimidated by quirkier crops. So I asked horticulture experts to recommend offbeat but easy-to-grow fruit and vegetables. Here are their picks.

Mark Ferguson is the executive chef at

It's a slick idea: turn the classic nature-doc formula on ourselves. The result isn't, as one might expect, just another smarmy reality show. In the BBC's capable hands, humans get the same treatment Planet Earth gave natural phenomena and Life gave animals. The finished product, the eight-part series Human Planet, is as much art as it is documentary.

Tracking "the most remarkable species of all," as the trailer calls us, into insane situations, we see humans fishing on the treacherous cusp of Victoria Falls, scaring a full pride of lions off its meaty prey, and enduring a 60-mile trek through icy Himalayan passes just to get to school. We see, basically, men and women conquering seemingly unconquerable elements -- and sometimes each other -- as they vie for dominance and survival.

The storytelling is expertly done, with well-informed pacing, unobtrusive narration (courtesy John Hurt), and adept use of music and slow motion. Human Planet owes much to its crisp, color-drenched cinematography; "wow" moments happen every few minutes. Behind-the-scenes clips show how frustrating, and how gratifying, it must be to work on these globetrotting BBC productions.

To their credit, the filmmakers manage to portray tribal cultures in all their anthropological elegance while staying well this side of the noble-savage error. They also avoid deriding "modern" cultures. By showing humans as it did the animals in Life -- that is, through an objective, scientific lens -- the BBC all but convinces viewers to refrain, for once, from judging their own kind.

Though its earnestness has already inspired at least one enjoyable spoof, even the most misanthropic environmentalist should be able to muster a nod of regard to this ambitious series.

Airs on the Discovery Channel at 8 p.m. Sun., Apr. 24; available on DVD Apr. 26

Hate germs but love the planet? Fortunately, a growing array of greener cleaning products lines stores' shelves these days. I asked sanitation experts of all ilk to name their favorite planet-preserving solutions, emphasizing that they couldn't be financially tied to their chosen brand. The result is a list that can...