March 2011

U.S. Drops To Third Place in Clean Energy Investment

The United States dropped to third place behind China and Germany in clean-energy investment last year, according to a report released at midnight by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Other key findings in the report:
Investment in clean energy rebounded…

Four Sites Where You Can Monitor U.S. Radiation Levels

I've updated this post at top with current sites, as of March 2015, but below that I've left intact the historical post, which I first published during the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and then updated in 2013.
The U.S. government's sites have changed…

EPA: Expect More Radiation in Rainwater

The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday reported finding elevated levels of iodine-131, a product of nuclear fission, in rainwater in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. The levels exceed the maximum contaminant level (MCL) permitted in drinking…

A Princeton-educated physicist-turned-farmer is growing more than vegetables on 30 acres in Missouri. Marcin Jakubowski is developing a collection of machines designed to build and support villages that sustain themselves with everything needed for…

By Jeff McMahon

I joined True/Slant, the news network pioneered by Lewis Dvorkin and company, in April 2009, a couple of months before its beta launch. I covered environmental news and politics for them until Forbes purchased the site and closed it down in August…

For a lifetime Mary Oliver has gently secluded herself, walked the woods, sent bottles out on the tide bearing simple messages that reconnect humanity to a beauty beyond us. Now we know why.
In an interview with Maria Shriver Mary Oliver reveals she…

Texas Ant Invasion Alarms Experts

It sounds like science fiction: a previously unknown insect with an appetite for electrical circuitry appears at a Houston-area chemical plant and marches toward the Johnson Space Center, defying human attempts to stop it with conventional…

A new forum at Forbes

As I hinted in a semi-final post at True/Slant, this forum has found a new home, under a new name and with a new mission, at Forbes. The assignment has changed, appropriate to the developing realities of the politics and economics of carbon. I’ll be…

Journalism, exquisite torment

I left the daily life of journalism at the turn of the Century, just before the daily life of journalism collapsed. That left me feeling a bit like Charlie Chaplin, who sold all his stocks in 1928.
Since then I’ve maintained journalism as a practice…