By John DeFore
The sudden explosion of stories about food shortages resulting from diversion of crops to biofuels may prod Westerners to think, likely for the first time in years, about just what and how much people typically eat in other parts of the world.
The recent paperback Hungry Planet, then, is timely: Though stuffed with [...]

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By John DeFore
Standing out in the current wave of books about the environment — dire jeremiads, thoughtful analyses, and green-leaning coffee-table books — is a compact but weighty tome that is largely uninterested in conveying to readers any kind of “the time is now!” urgency. Rather, American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau released April [...]

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By John DeFore
Tuesday sees the release on DVD of one of the higher-profile entries in the wave of documentaries about the environment, The 11th Hour. Like its big brother An Inconvenient Truth, it lands on retail shelves in slimmed-down packaging — this one replacing the usual bulky plastic case, with a paper sleeve recycled from [...]

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By Shermakaye Bass
It’s no surprise that Big Energy gets the role of Goliath in Mat Hames’ and George Sledge’s Fighting Goliath: The Texas Coal Wars, a documentary produced and narrated by Robert Redford and The Redford Center at Sundance Preserve that follows a recent chain of events in which coal companies tried to fast [...]

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By Barbara Kessler
If timing is everything, then premiering a film that champions biofuels at a time when the news media’s aflame with stories about the problems with biofuels must be a tad discouraging.
But Josh Tickell, creator of Fields of Fuel, does not seem discouraged. Determined, but not discouraged. Tickell, who has been been on [...]

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By Barbara Kessler
While Americans nestle in their homes this holiday break, environmentalists will be watching and waiting for a thumbs up or down on the status of the polar bear, whose predicted foreshortened future holds little to celebrate.
The Bush Administration, under court order to make a decision after the National Resources Defense Council and [...]

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By Shermakaye Bass
As the holiday count-down begins, and hordes of already wiped out, over-worked parents lurch into their annual late-night mall marathons, many are haunted by concerns over toy safety. With more than 23 million recalled this year, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the questions are obvious:
What’s safe, what’s not? [...]

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By Harriet Blake
Nobel prize winner and former presidential candidate Al Gore came under fire earlier this year when a think tank accused him of having a home in Nashville that used 20 times as much electricity as the average household nationwide.
Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, said at the time, [...]

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By Barbara Kessler

Measured against green ideals, a glossy new coffee table book can seem a bit indulgent, even anachronistic. Where’s the soy ink and recycled paper?
Those are valid questions, but in some cases, we’d like to think that the educational and aesthetic powers of a truly fine collection of photographs and words can have [...]

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By Barbara Kessler
The United Nations Climate Change Conference kicked off in Bali this week, where bloggers report that the tropical heat is keeping everyone viscerally aware of the topic at hand. The conference brings together representatives from more than 180 countries and hundreds of journalists and environmental activists. The plan is to hammer [...]

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By John DeFore
Living by the reduce/reuse/recycle mantra can be a challenge, a chore, a karmic satisfaction or tangible improvement in lifestyle. But it’s rarely something one participates in avidly, anticipating it eagerly while at work or singing its praises at parties.
Lately, though, I’ve been obsessed with a novel way of reducing the world’s waste [...]

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By Barbara Kessler
While others dither about how to make coal-burning electricity plants cleaner and inch toward green electricity, replacing coal with cleaner (but still problematic) energy sources such as hydro-electric and nuclear power, the world’s largest Internet company wants to hop skip ahead to find really clean, safe, sustainable energy.
Yes, your friendly neighborhood search [...]

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