Environment and Health
Green Believers
By framing measles vaccinations as a matter of choice, Senator Rand Paul made himself — along with all politicians who value individual liberty more than the common good — look silly. Bruce Jenner is sporting nail polish and a ponytail. If the Olympic gold medalist...
The Keystone XL Pipe Dream
Use Your Words
On the last day of January, I lost a friend. Cancer took her in the prime of life, at age 45. Just seven days before she succumbed, I sat at her side, trying to tell her what she meant to me. Cedwyn was the life of the party. Wherever she went instantly became the...
Give Yourself Some Loving
Greeting cards treat Valentine's Day like it's a day for love. But for many people, it’s a day of self-loathing. "Why am I single, yet again, on another Valentine's Day?" they may wonder. And it goes on: "Why can't I get my house clean? Or get it together at work? Why...
Don’t Give Up the Fight
My social circle was shaken a few days into the new year with an upsetting blog post. A friend I will call Mary is seriously ill. The blogger requested loving messages to her to be sewn into a quilt. This bombshell began a flood of phone calls, emails, and Facebook...
Scrubbing the Air of Smog
I can only imagine the fear that must grip a parent when his or her child suffers an asthma attack. And I can scarcely fathom how much time and energy they spend doing everything they can to avoid triggers for these potentially deadly attacks. A major asthma trigger...
Pipeline to Nowhere
When Maria van der Hoeven summed up the 20-year outlook for global energy investment in London last year, she identified a couple of daunting challenges. The amount of money required by 2035 is a staggering $48 trillion, the International Energy Agency chief and...
Your Smartphone Could Be Poisoning Children
Kim Gunoo is a 15-year-old South Korean boy who has lived with perpetual diarrhea since birth. His first seven months were spent in and out of the hospital, where four major surgeries resulted in the full removal of his large intestine. Ever since, Gunoo has required...
Get Wild without Abandoning Common Sense
Minutes to midnight on New Year's Eve, I sat around a fire with friends, discussing plans for 2015. I told them mine: to hike over 200 miles on the John Muir Trail through the High Sierras, by myself. They told me that I’m nuts. “I might do it if I brought my gun,”...
A Lump of Coal for Fossil Fuels
The fossil-fuel divestment movement got the perfect holiday gift in 2014: tumbling stocks. Founded only two years ago by experts and students fed up with the glacial pace of climate action, this global effort is already liquidating more than $50 billion of the oil,...
