In Boston, Clean Air Is More Controversial than Drunk Naked Chicks
The same city that has yet to ban ads of half-naked women pushing alcohol has just pulled the plug on an ad from climate change activists 350.org that calls Senator Scott Brown out on his vote to gut the Clean Air Act. The poster-size ads were crowd-funded, with the majority of funding coming…
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The Frankenfish Should Be a Wake-Up Call
Last month at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Cooking for Solutions Conference , the emergence of genetically modified salmon on the U.S. market was a matter of great debate. After three days of listening to speakers and chatting with colleagues, what stood out most to me was that we have a major…
The Plastic Industry Is the New Tobacco Industry
In the 1980s and 1990s Big Tobacco, mostly led by Philip Morris, spent millions of dollars trying to stop two things they were convinced would ruin their business:…
Surprise! Pepsi’s New Plant Bottle Is Good Old-Fashioned Greenwashing
First things first: It’s great that companies are looking for alternatives to plastic, and there’s huge potential for bioplastics to be a big part of the solution to our single-use plastic problem. On that note, Pepsi and Coca Cola deserve kudos for putting their money where their press…
Biomimicry Queen Janine Benyus: What Would Nature Do?
In the 1990s, Janine Benyus, a natural sciences writer and the author of several wilderness guides, began to pay close attention to how various organisms adapted to the ecosystems around them. That led her to wonder if similar strategies couldn’t be applied to the human problems of the …
The Arctic Food Web Is Unraveling, Endangering Polar Bears and Humans Alike
By Bruce Barcott, OnEarth Magazine
This is the cover story of the latest issue of OnEarth Magazine, graciously shared in advance with The Faster Times.
On a Saturday morning in late November in Kotzebue, Alaska, a village 33 miles north of the Arctic Circle, two Inupiat men nursed cups…
Are We Taking a Big Step Back on Environmental Regulations?
By Elizabeth Grossman, The Pump Handle
As I’ve watched the hearings House Republicans have been holding over the past couple of weeks on the economic impact of environmental and occupational health and safety regulations, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learned about and seen of the…
High-Speed Rail: A Political Hat Trick
The Obama administration’s announcement yesterday that it hopes to make a six-year, $53 billion dollar investment in high-speed rail networks is bound to win big applause from green groups that have been less-than-impressed with the President lately. If enviros were the only folks…
Could a Super-Computer Save the World?
Last month IBM announced a big project in Rhode Island, and at first I just skimmed over the announcement as one of a dozen or so releases about the company’s various “smart” endeavors. But on a closer look, the project looks a lot like a model for collaboration that other states should pay…
Why Are We Still Polluting Babies?
By Dr Sarah Janssen, Natural Resources Defense Council
It’s National Birth Defects Prevention month and while we have made great strides in raising awareness about the importance of folate and prenatal vitamins in early pregnancy, there are a number of birth defects which continue to…
