Environment and Health
The Real Drug Racket
Al Capone, the infamous mob boss and bootlegger in Chicagoland during the 1920s, always maintained that he was just a businessman. The only difference between him and others, he insisted, was that the law criminalized his business while legalizing the criminality of...
Mindful Kids, Mindful World
I often ask my youngest yoga students, “What does it mean to be mindful?” “Mindful is when you pay attention to right now,” one of my first graders once responded. “Like your mind is full of just right now.” Pretty spot on. Researchers at Berkeley define mindfulness...
Coal’s Collateral Damage
Coal’s death throes are drawing closer, especially in Appalachia. Nearly three-quarters of the coal extracted from West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky these days is being mined at a loss. The number of coal companies declaring bankruptcy or edging toward it is...
Mountaintop Decapitation
Greening Spring Cleaning
What’s that smell in the air? It's fresh and floral — and probably filled with formaldehyde. It's spring-cleaning time once again. And in the name of cleanliness, people everywhere are dousing their homes and workplaces with dangerous, even toxic, cleaning products....
Fossil Fuel Extinction
The Hairball That Gagged a Fracker
Imagine a political campaign against environmentalists that's so negative, so ridiculously slanted and downright dirty, that it actually repulsed executives of some of America's biggest fracking corporations. It's got to take a big wad of ugly to gag a fracker. But in...
Wine over Brine
My home near Seneca Lake in New York is famous for a lot of things — good wine, fine food, and the Finger Lakes region’s beautiful scenery. Now, though, Crestwood Midstream — a Houston-based company that drills, stores, and distributes fracked natural gas — wants to...
It’s Not Easy for Obama to Prove He’s Green
President Barack Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, recently boasted that his boss will “go down in history as the greenest president we’ve ever had.” Yes, cars, trucks, and buses will increasingly burn less fuel because of this White House. If the courts don’t spike...
Life in Anxietyland
Greetings from Anxietyland. Or as some might know it, graduate school. I've got just a few weeks left of teaching and taking classes before the semester ends. You might see that as hectic yet manageable. It's not exactly fun, but it's only temporary. Logically, I can...
