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A team of experts asked to assess California's water situation have published their findings, and it ain't a pretty picture. "Our assessment of the current water situation [in California] is bleak," says an economist involved in the research. "California has essentially run out of cheap, new water sources." Not that we didn't already know that, but if we needed any confirmation, there it......read more
"The depletion, deterioration, and exhaustion of resources and the worsening ecological environment have become bottlenecks and grave impediments to the nation's economic and social development."If you were to guess which country's environment minister made that statement, China probably wouldn't be your first guess. The U.S., maybe. Possibly Germany, or South Korea. But not China. Yep,......read more
Hmm... maybe banning plastic bags wasn't such a bad idea after all. The LA times reports on alarming new oceanic research from southern California, where scientists from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project found bits of plastic in the stomachs of 35% of the fish they collected off the U.S. west coast. That's a lot of fish! The......read more
The winning entry of this year's coveted Young Architects Program at MoMA PS1 is a massive, bright blue installation that absorbs air pollution. Dubbed "Wendy" by architects HWKN (HollwichKushner), the 5,000 square foot structure will sit in the MoMA PS1 courtyard during the museum's Warm Up summer music series. The star-shaped structure combines common materials (scaffolding) with......read more
Good news for fracking opponents in New York state this week, as an N.Y. Supreme Court judge ruled that the upstate town of Dryden is within its rights to ban a company from drilling for natural gas within its borders. Last August, Dryden's Town Board passed a drilling ban and was sued a month later by the Anschutz Exploration Corporation, whose lawyers argued that the town had no power to......read more
So energy is a big deal. Where we get it from, how much of it we use, and what consequences result from using it have massive implications on our planet and our species. One side of this coin is looking at the energy that we use to power our homes, offices, and grid-connected technology. Another side of the energy coin involves transportation, which gets us from A to B, along with most of the......read more
In an announcement that's as laden with symbolism as rivers are with sediment, American Rivers has named the Potomac River, which flows through the nation's capital, the most endangered river in the United States. "America’s Most Endangered Rivers," the annual report from the clean water advocacy group, noted that the Potomac is under increasing threat from pollution caused by urban......read more
Seattle artist Chris Jordan is well known for creating large-scale works depicting mass consumption and waste. Like most people, we first heard about him via "Midway, Message From The Gyre," his Prix Pictet-nominated photo series showing the deadly effects of oceanic plastic pollution on baby albatrosses. We're new to his ongoing "Running the Numbers" series, in which he recreates historic......read more
Poor plastic grocery bags. It must be hard to know that your time is coming to a close. And make no mistake, after L.A. councillors voted 13-1 to ban single use bags in the city, the end is nigh, indeed. L.A. is but the latest in a growing number of American cities and regions that are ditching single use plastic bags. But this time it's different. When Seattle, Portland, and San......read more
In a finding that restores our faith in judicial common sense, a federal appeals court in Washington has upheld the Environmental Protection Agency's right to regulate greenhouse gases in the name of public health. The decision is a major victory for Obama's climate pollution policy and a decisive blow to the utilities, coal companies, Koch-funded climate deniers and states like Texas that......read more
