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Oh Snap! Little Green Alien Takes Earthling To School
Well, it’s true that here on a blog, the currency is words. We’re supposed to tell stories through our prose. But today I’m going to go easy on the blog and yield the storytelling to a small collection of witty, beautiful, foot-stomping and surreal art by people who are mastering other mediums to talk about…
Read MoreMonday Reads: The Laughter Edition
These days, it seems like the fossil fuel companies are the only ones having gigglefests. BP checked off a tidy $9.9 billion tax deduction for its handiwork in the Gulf last year. A company calling itself “Making Money Having Fun LLC” is dumping 80 truckloads of coal ash a day onto Bokoshe, OK—a place where…
Read MoreOn the Job Training: Earthjustice-Style
(Kari Birdseye is the new National Press Secretary for Earthjustice. An 11-year veteran with CNN, she was comforted by the familiar, hectic pace she experienced in her first week with Earthjustice communications.) What a week. What a first week at work for Earthjustice. Even before I entered the doors, I knew the Gulf Oil Spill anniversary…
Read MoreFlorida's Governor Turns Greed-Green
Coming from an Irish family and working for Earthjustice, I have an affection for green that is DNA-deep. But, I know the difference between the green of nature and the green of greed — and nowhere is that difference so starkly obvious as in Florida. An explosion of green algae slime, fed by uncontrolled agricultural…
Read More41 Years Ago, The Sun Set Three Hours Early
Today—Earth Day—I was trying to figure out what kind of angle to write about, when I remembered a column I wrote last year, reflecting on the first Earth Day in 1970. What struck me about that column is how it revealed that recycling, which we now take for granted as a cultural and financial institution,…
Read MoreFighting Fracking: A Love Story
The Slotterback's journey began with a day hike on their favorite trail, and now, as Jim told me, "We're prepared to spend the rest of our lives working on this issue."
Read MoreFriday Finds: Where's the (Tainted) Beef?
Bacteria-resistant meat leaves beef lovers nauseated A recent study found that nearly half of all beef, chicken, pork and turkey purchased at grocery stores across the country contained drug-resistant bacteria, reports Wired. Even worse, 52 percent of the meat contaminated with the common pathogen Staphylococcus aureus was resistant to at least three antibiotics commonly used…
Read MoreJosh Fox: On Protecting the Place I Love From Fracking
This week, in connection with the launch of our campaign Fracking Gone Wrong: Finding a Better Way, we’ve invited some of the movement’s most prominent advocates to guest blog. Today's guest blogger is Josh Fox, an Oscar-nominated director whose award-winning documentary GASLAND has helped ignite a national outcry against the dangers of the controversial gas drilling technique known as fracking.
Read MoreEerie symmetry: Well Blowout on Anniversary of BP Spill
The symmetry is just eerie. Exactly one year after the BP disaster in the Gulf, natural gas drilling company Chesapeake admitted that a well it was hydraulically fracturing (or “fracking”) for natural gas went out of control in LeRoy, Pennsylvania late Tuesday, spilling thousands and thousands of gallons of frack fluid over containment walls, through fields,…
Read MoreCracking The Code On Spill of Fracking Fluids in Pennsylvania
As Chesapeake Energy Corp. struggles to contain a massive spill of toxic, hydraulic fluids yesterday at a natural gas fracking site in Pennsylvania, it also is struggling to explain how this dangerous event happened and how they are handling it. I mean, how do you explain away the poisoning of water supplies, waterways and farmers’ fields? Of…
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