Environment and Health
The Fracking Rush Hits a Pothole
Ever heard of Bryan Sheffield? The baby-faced tycoon enjoyed a brief blast of fame a few months ago when he became one of those rare non-tech billionaires under 40. What ignited his rise to the ranks of Americans with money to burn? He owns a company called Parsley...
Berkeley Beats Big Soda
While the Republicans were busy wiping the floor with Democrats on Election Day, the citizens of Berkeley, California were making history. An overwhelming majority of Berkeley's voters — 75 percent — passed the nation’s first soda tax. The penny-per-ounce tax on all...
The Unbearable Politeness of Being Gus Speth
James Gustave Speth garnishes reflections on his many accomplishments with self-deprecating humor. And the man who helped establish two influential environmental organizations, piloted a United Nations agency, and served in the Carter White House wants you to know he...
Denton Tells Big Oil to Frack Off
The University of North Texas, best known for its top-notch jazz program and sometimes for its "Mean Green" football team, might soon become known as Frack U. UNT (where I went to college back in the Paleocene Epoch) and the good people of the surrounding city of...
Wal-Mart Scrooges Us All
Gosh, time flies when it's pushed along by a jet stream of greed. It seems like only yesterday that Wal-Mart announced, with much self-congratulatory fanfare, that the super-rich retailing colossus wasn't a scrooge after all. Indeed, while the world's largest purveyor...
Here Come the Rain and Drought
What is it about natural disasters and irony? Just as local authorities in Detroit were denying thousands of people access to running water, the bankrupt city experienced an epic downpour. More than 4.5 inches of rain pounded Motown in mid-August, causing $1.2 billion...
‘Leave’ Them Alone
This time of year, your trees are sending you a message. Although I grew up in the Midwest, I'm experiencing it anew. After spending eight blissful years in California, I've returned to a state where people wear hats shaped like cheese and where leaves turn colors and...
The Media’s New Climate Denial
What planet does Big Media think it's living on? Over 300,000 people filled the streets of New York City in September as part of the worldwide People's Climate March, a stirring call for action on global warming. But if you watched TV news that day, you may not have...
Banning Medical Pot Makes No Sense
A few months back, a friend of mine died of cancer. I'll call her "Karen," for her privacy. By the time we met, she was already terminally ill and had been for months. Over the next year and a half, I watched my friend lose her hair and waste away until I could hardly...
Some Serious Potty Talk
There's a photo-word montage on the Internet in which a little boy, presumably from Africa, looks skeptically at a woman who is apparently from somewhere else. The boy asks, "You mean to tell me you have so much clean water, that you (poop) in it?" Umm…yeah. Yeah, we...
