Environment and Health
Is Solar Energy Really Too Expensive?
In order for solar power to compete with other forms of energy, the conventional thinking goes, it needs to become way cheaper. Installing rooftop solar panels can be prohibitively expensive, after all, and it takes years before the resulting energy savings pay off....
To Stop ‘Bomb Trains,’ I Honeymooned in Jail
It was a few days after my wedding. I was supposed to be honeymooning at a nearby winery with my newly minted husband, celebrating our unlikely marriage at age 55. Instead, I was sitting on the railroad tracks in the pouring rain. Along with 20 other brave souls, some...
A Yellow-Brick Road for Immigrant Women
The Wizard of Oz was one of my favorite movies as kid growing up in Trinidad. I liked thinking that a magical storm could take you somewhere new, where you could meet fun new friends and even take your pet dog along. Heck, even a new pair of shiny red shoes awaited...
The Miserable Catch 22 of Mental Illness
I'm depressed. I've dealt with mental health issues for decades now. Nothing fancy or interesting like multiple personalities or hallucinations. Just run-of-the-mill boring ones — good old depression and anxiety, and maybe some undiagnosed PTSD to go with it. Mental...
Hooked on Conservation
Something remarkable has happened to recreational fishing. Increasingly, game fishers no longer publicly display their catches at rodeo weigh-ins or on taxidermy fish mounts. Even the age-old practice of rendering the day’s catch to fillets destined for a grill or a...
Is This New Reform a Toxic Waste?
There should've been an overhaul in how we regulate toxic chemicals years ago. Like when the 2010 President's Cancer Panel report concluded that babies are now born "pre-polluted." Or when it came to light that a common flame retardant used in household items actually...
Trump’s ‘Realty Check’ on Climate
Newsflash: Donald Trump isn’t as retrograde on climate change as we thought. It turns out he’s well aware of the dangers of global warming — at least to his golf courses. The Republican presidential hopeful is so concerned, in fact, that he’s petitioned the Irish...
Your Chewing Gum Is Making You a Lab Rat
Whenever I'm on a long road trip, chomping down on a piece of gum helps me stay awake. I don’t choose gum because it's bright white or glossy, but because the burst of sweet minty freshness really keeps me going. Thanks to nanotechnology, I have my choice of brilliant...
The Death Gap
Rich people live longer than poor people. No big news there — we’ve known that health tracks wealth for quite some time now. But here’s what we haven’t known: The life-expectancy gap between rich and poor in the United States is actually accelerating. Since 2001,...
This Election, We Can’t Afford to Ignore the Climate
Our great coastal cities could be flooded within the lifetime of children born today. That's the conclusion of researchers studying the West Antarctic ice sheet — a mass of ice larger than Mexico that could rapidly break apart over the next century. Meanwhile, our...
