Children and bees are a winning combination. They really are. I learned this last summer when I planted bee-friendly gardens with kids at five summer camps. I knew it would work, even though women at three different nurseries muttered, "Telling kids to attract bees. Good luck with that..."

I had...

Happy Hemp History Week! Hemp should be an all-American success story. The enormous value of hemp is that it can do just about everything... except get you high. But it is the identical twin of marijuana, and for that reason alone it's illegal to grow hemp in this country. Sound...

When General Motors' EV1 rolled out in 1996, there was no infrastructure for it, gas was about ten cents a gallon, and cars were turning into military vehicles. And I still wanted one. But then it was gone.

Flash forward to President Obama saying we'll have a million electric...

E-waste was consuming me in 2010. Actually, e-wastefulness was. I thought about it all the time.

The mined metals going into electronics were linked to gangsters and despots; the waste going out was linked to poisonous mountain ranges trekked by garbage-picking children.

Reducing my own electronic consumption...

The original Tea Party took place at Boston Harbor in 1773. You can attend a popular re-enactment of it every December (adults $9). Two miles away, the Fenway Victory Gardens, started in 1942, are still growing (admission free). Both sites mark the safe-guarding of American freedom.

Like its namesake,...

Large scale hydropower, which provides about 7 percent of our country's electricity, always seems to have a skeptical asterisk over the words "green" and "renewable."

It doesn't help that founding builders of "big hydro" were so excited to erect each sweeping colossus of a dam, they'd probably answer salmon...

When I got on that stationery bike at Triple M radio's Roots Festival in Madison, Wisconsin, providing electricity for Stage 2, I thought, "This is it. Human-powered gyms are right around the corner!" That was 2008.

When I started this blog in 2010, I went straight to Google with "human...

On the eve of the G8 summit this summer, an NPR reporter asked an African
man what he hoped the summit, with its conscience newly pricked by the Live
Eight concerts, could achieve. The man answered that beyond any G8 actions,
what Africans really needed was the...