Environment and Health
Giving a Big Story the Cold Shoulder
It's summer — time for barbecues, family vacations, and July 4th fireworks. Unfortunately, summer has also become a time for wildfires, drought, triple-digit heat waves, catastrophic storms, and other deadly reminders of the impact climate change has on our planet....
A Raw Deal from TransCanada and the Texas Railroad Commission
Arrogance is an unpleasant trait. When overlaid with ignorance, it really gets ugly. Meet Arrogance: TransCanada Corporation. The Calgary-based $1.3 billion pipeline giant is now demanding a U.S. permit to run its Keystone XL pipeline right down our country's center...
A Deceptive Win on Plan B for Women
Good news for advocates of sensible birth control policy: The Obama administration announced that it's dropping the fight to impose an age restriction on sales of Plan B One-Step, the emergency contraception pill. Reproductive rights advocates are celebrating this...
A More Sustainable Future for Us All
Like many great Americans, Sierra Club founder John Muir was an immigrant. It's only because the Scottish-born environmentalist visionary, who arrived in the United States at the age of 11 after a six-week sea voyage from Glasgow, was able to take advantage of the...
Cleaning Up Our Portfolios
Climate change may one day cause us to run low on food. Scientists don't like to talk about it, but there's a chance that the disruption we've caused by burning fossil fuels may even render life on Earth no longer viable for the human race. Sure, that sounds grim. To...
Screwballism vs. Science
When asked what the world needs, people tend to go all gushy and offer up such fuzzy stuff as "world peace" and "more kindness." Yeah, yeah — but get real. Let's talk practicality here. What the world needs is something tangible, a new whiz-bang product that will...
Neglecting Mother Nature
Wealth and power Bring this curse, Air and water Ever worse. Whether a country's capitalist or communist, a dictatorship or a democracy, it makes no difference to Mother Nature. Regardless of the dominant economic philosophy or form of government, the environment is...
Oklahoma’s Silly Goose
License to Kill
Regulations stink, right? Lots of politicians run on promises that they'll get rid of them to make way for an economic boom. Well, have you ever considered what our world would look like without regulations? In the early 20th century, almost all paint contained lead....
Don’t Mourn the Planet’s Destruction, Organize!
Should we weep or cheer on Earth Day? Both. The first step toward any recovery is admitting that we have a problem. In fact, beaucoup problems. For example, despite the squawking of profiteering polluters and professional deniers, our very atmosphere — without which...
