By John DeFore
In a mammoth report being issued this month, the U.S. Department of Energy lays out a detailed scenario in which, by the year 2030, one fifth of America’s electricity could come from wind.
The report, which is the work not only of DOE employees but of academics and a wide array of […]

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By Harriet Blake
In Columbus, Ohio, yesterday Mayor Michael Coleman and his staff biked from their homes to the Ohio Statehouse, jacking up their heart rates and kicking-off the city’s 20-year Bicentennial Bikeways Plan.

Photo: City of Columbus
 
Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman
In Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino fought a stiff wind cycling a half mile from City […]

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By John DeFore

With the chorus of ethanol critics becoming impossible to ignore, biofuel advocates are under pressure to pursue options that don’t threaten the world’s food supplies. Researchers at the University of Texas announced late last month that they’ve developed a promising contender:

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By John DeFore
If and when the subject of overpopulation crosses their minds, most Americans think of places in Africa and Asia that already have enough people to stretch the limits of natural resources. But few seem to worry about it happening in our own back yard.

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By Harriet Blake
As the 7th annual Conference on Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) continues this week (May 5-8) in Pittsburgh, many environmentalists are finding themselves in disagreement on the subject.

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By John DeFore
While polar bear populations face the challenge of habitat melting beneath their feet, organisms that call water home appear to be grappling with a stranger difficulty: More and more areas of the ocean have oxygen levels too low to sustain them.A report just published in the journal Science asserts that, as tropical […]

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By Shermakaye Bass
In the 1918 silent film starring “Scraps,” the canine hero, Charlie Chaplin asserted, “It’s a Dog’s Life.” Back then, “a dog’s life” was a good thing.

Photo: American Humane Association
But these days environmentalists are wondering: What exactly does a dog’s life consist of? Just how safe are our dogs and cats, our birds, […]

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By John DeFore
It’s widely understood that the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in health care has a daunting long-term cost: Bacteria that aren’t killed by the drugs can adapt, breeding new strains that are immune to current drugs.
But while proper use by patients is critical to antibiotics’ efficacy — if your doctor prescribes them, […]

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By John DeFore
It’s probably unavoidable that people living in this age of technological wonders, when faced with issues as daunting as global warming, will secretly trust science to invent a way out of them. Recent media attention to “geoengineering” schemes is just one example — the idea being that, if humans have put things […]

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Earth Day reverberated around the world on Sunday, with festivals from Tokyo to Barcelona to San Francisco. In the United States, the key urban festivals attracted crowds of thousands as entertainers blasted music in New York City’s Central Park, the Mall in Washington D.C. and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
But while the day was […]

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Are you looking to get down and dirty for the 39th Annual Earth Day? The commemoration brings a collection of great festivals this weekend (April 20). It’s also a time to renew our personal commitment to the health of the planet. So come with us as we talk about projects you can do, like composting, […]

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By Shermakaye Bass
and Barbara Kessler
There’s no doubt that community gardens, a tradition that first surfaced in the United States in the early 1900’s, are at the grassroots of today’s urban “buy local/grow local” movement. But today, in places as diverse as New York City and Madison, Wisc., community gardens are also a socio-cultural […]

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