What makes us sick?  Who makes us sick? If we pass laws to protect ourselves from disease and illness caused by human activity, is it up to us, as individuals, to pay for the consequences when those laws fail due to a lack of compliance or a failure of the...

When an expansion of the Big Stone coal-fired power plant was announced, conventional wisdom said that it couldn’t be stopped. Utilities across the country forecast the need for large numbers of new plants to satisfy our insatiable demand for more and more electricity. Big Stone II, as the...

The Product Policy Institute has recently released two new reports that confirm product and packaging waste contribute forty-four percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The reports, produced by the U.S. EPA and the Product Policy Institute, look at both products produced within the U.S. and those...

Perhaps the biggest challenge in changing human behavior to address the reality of climate change is connecting impacts to every day life.  But there is a clearly obvious impact to which most people do not give adequate consideration.   While the catalysts for climate change are greenhouse gases like CO2...

Author’s Note:  I offer this blog with profound apologies to the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and in support of H.R. 3650, which was recently passed by the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of  the House Science and Technology Committee.  This bill would create two national programs, coordinated by the National...

Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer today introduced a Senate bill to address climate change.  The Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act (CEJAPA).   This bill is badly needed to immediately address climate change, but it is a bill that aspires to accomplish that mission in...

This story started in rural California with a poisoned community, energized Erin Brockovich to become an activist and gained wide public attention through the 2000 movie, Erin Brockovich starring Julia Roberts. An important new chapter in the story unfolded yesterday when, thanks to the...

There’s a great scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s cold war thriller Torn Curtain where Professor Armstrong, Paul Newman’s character, is trying to kill an East German farmer’s wife in her kitchen. Don’t worry, she’s a villain. The scene goes on for an excruciatingly long time until he is finally...

In Mike Nichol's classic 1967 film The Graduate Benjamin Braddock was a recent graduate being feted at a party thrown by his parents. A friend of his father offered a single word of advice: "Plastics".

When screenwriter Buck Henry wrote these words, he was offering a metaphor for the shallow,...

Given that the United States is now the proud owner of 61% of General Motors, and given that I am one of the 300 million new owners, I have some strong opinions about what to do with my fractional ownership stake. It's true that my share is quite tiny, but...

I attended a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon where an impressively broad coalition of groups, joined by members of Congress, spoke on ACES, The American Clean Energy Security Act. A floor vote for passage of this bill is slated for Friday. Call your Member of...

A few times on We All Live Downstream, Lynn Thorp, myself and and others have discussed Clean Water Action's work on chemical policy. Since the beginning of this year, several states and other municipalities have taken action against Bisphenol-A (BPA). More than 200 studies have shown that human...

World Environment Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972, the same year they established the United Nations Environment Programme. World Environment Day is celebrated on June 5 in a different host city each year with a different theme. This year the host city is...

The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) cleared its first hurdle this week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee. I guess you need to be more than a little bit wonky to enjoy watching the markup on c-span, but I have to admit it was fun...

In the beginning, there was Swine Flu. As it spread and became more than some remote problem south of the border, the PR machine for Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO's) in general and the pork products industry in particular became concerned. Presto, change-o, we have the more generic...