The Obama administration has decided to delay a decision on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline until after the 2012 election. This is an extraordinary achievement for the thousands of grassroots activists who put ourselves on the line -- and is clear evidence for the environmental movement that directly targeting...
145 Comments | Posted October 19, 2011 | 13:40:23 (EST)
Late last night, sheriffs' deputies in Muskingum County, Ohio responded to reported sightings of tigers, lions and bears by descending on the farm of Terry Thompson, who was known to keep exotic animals. Thompson apparently opened the cages for approximately 50 of his animals and then killed himself.
Under orders...
849 Comments | Posted October 10, 2011 | 17:55:49 (EST)
If you thought President Obama's expressions of sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street movement meant he was suddenly going to stand up for "the 99%," think again. Obama has just submitted to Congress the Chamber of Commerce-backed Colombia, Panama, and Korea Free Trade Agreements. And now, thanks to maneuvering by...
Posted September 6, 2011 | 16:28:48 (EST)
If there's a single idea that the oil industry has peddled to persuade the Obama administration to approve the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, it's this: tar sands oil might be more polluting than even dirty old regular oil, but it's better to get our energy from our ally...
Posted May 11, 2011 | 15:02:52 (EST)
Looking for a lesson of how not to respond to green consumer demand in the internet age? Check out Girl Scouts USA.
The Scouts' CEO Kathy Cloninger has for several years rebuffed polite requests from individual scouts, major environmental organizations, and others that they make their famous Girl Scout cookies...
Posted May 2, 2011 | 11:40:24 (EST)
The U.S. military's success in finding and killing Osama bin Laden is a gigantic victory in the war against terror and for a safer, freer world.
But if this is to be the beginning of the end for al Qaeda and repressive governments everywhere, we have to make it...
Posted April 21, 2011 | 14:04:37 (EST)
On the eve of the Power Shift 2011 climate youth conference, no one expects President Obama to show. If he did, he'd probably get booed by activists angry about his tightening embrace of the oil, coal, gas, and nuclear industries. But it was a very different story two years ago...
Posted April 11, 2011 | 17:09:03 (EST)
Although Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Barack Obama stood firm against Republican attempts to repeal clean air and clean water protections, wolves in the Northern Rockies weren't so lucky.
Under pressure from ranching interests in Montana and Idaho, as well as anti-wolf zealots in...
Posted March 24, 2011 | 21:35:54 (EST)
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar yesterday announced an enormous expansion in coal-mining that dwarfs the Obama administration's clean energy initiatives -- suggesting that President Obama's response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster increasingly involves doubling down on other forms of dirty, unsafe energy.
A statement from Wild Earth Guardians,...
Posted March 23, 2011 | 11:19:54 (EST)
When Kellogg's announced this week that it is moving to limit the deforestation caused by the palm oil it uses to make Frosted Flakes, Keebler cookies, Rice Krispies, and Girl Scout cookies, it represented an enormous achievement for two 15-year-old girls from Michigan.
You may remember Madison Vorva...
Posted February 22, 2011 | 16:10:02 (EST)
It's Girl Scout cookie season, but Michigan scouts Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva are finding other ways to support the organization's mission of "building girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place" than selling those famous Thin Mints and Tagalongs. Many varieties of Girl Scout...
Posted December 1, 2010 | 19:42:52 (EST)
The planet lost a great and generous hero on Monday when philanthropist Richard N. Goldman died at the age of 90. Goldman is most famous for co-founding the Goldman Prize, $150,000 awarded annually to a grassroots environmental activist on each of six inhabited continents.It seems as if Goldman...
Posted October 11, 2010 | 18:55:32 (EST)
The Wall Street Journal front page today featured a breathless report that 72 senior staffers for members of Congress had traded stocks in companies over which their bosses had some influence. Although the article noted that both Republicans and Democrats had participated in these legal trades, it spent...
Posted September 14, 2010 | 11:12:40 (EST)
I confess that when I initially heard of it, I thought Bill McKibben’s drive to return solar panels to the White House was essentially a waste of time: of all the things to ask the president, it seemed like the smallest, most insignificant, and easiest. It certainly wouldn’t...
Posted July 27, 2010 | 11:37:14 (EST)
Environmentalists and their allies have expressed "disappointment," at the failure of the Senate to cap carbon pollution this year. A few bold voices have even suggested, gingerly, that President Obama might bear just a teensy bit of responsibility for this failure by not aggressively lobbying the Senate to take action...
Posted July 13, 2010 | 00:53:44 (EST)
This post was co-authored by Dr. Rahul Rajkumar, a physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
As oil and gas continue to spew out of a broken pipe at the BP spill site in the Gulf of Mexico, those of us who rode on the health care reform bandwagon...
Posted April 13, 2010 | 12:00:20 (EST)
In case you didn't have enough reasons to dislike the Taliban, The Wall Street Journal's Yaroslav Tromifov looks at how they're using revenue from illegal logging to finance attacks on U.S. troops (though, via some monumentally twisted logic, the article actually blames the logging ban, rather than...
Posted March 18, 2010 | 03:43:28 (EST)
Co-authored by Stephen Lovett.
Within the next few days, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman are going to unveil energy and climate legislation. If this legislation is to have any chance at either environmental, economic, or political success, they must avoid the "energy-only" approach that would entirely...
Posted December 31, 2009 | 12:53:39 (EST)
Generations from now, long after the last Twitter follower has unfriended the last Facebook user, this decade will be remembered and felt for its impact on Nature: the species that were saved and those that were lost; the heating of the planet; the forests cut down and those that continue...
Posted September 1, 2009 | 14:33:55 (EST)
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks’s article this morning presents himself as Obama’s wannabe political consigliere, dispensing advice on how he can emerge from the malaise and growing unpopularity that has beset his administration.
Brooks’s advice now is basically the same that it’s always been: if you...

18 Comments | Posted November 11, 2011 | 10:56:22 (EST)