I recently had a discussion with like-minded folks where we bantered about what it meant to be “green.”  It’s gone from fringe to fashion, activist to academic, from mocked to a true movement. Growing up, the debate had always been so polarized.  Remember the spotted owl controversy of the early 1990s?  Then there was the [...]

Los Angeles is often the straw man when you read about California’s environmental problems.  The left screams bloody murder at the thought of offshore drilling.  Conservative farmers ask why “their” water is going to swimming pools in Southern California.  LA = smog, which is the view of many people, including one former college pal who [...]

Yesterday, Greenpeace pulled another stunt:  unfurling a banner at Mount Rushmore to send the G-8 a message about climate stage.  Of course my impression of most Greenpeace activists is that most can’t read a book or map:  did any of them realize that the G-8 summit was in Italy?   (more…)

“ . . . when it lifts him above mere appetite for wildness, ruggedness, and the feeling of mass and precipitous elevation, into a perception and love of the refined grandeur, the chaste sublimity, the airy majesty overlaid with tender and polished bloom, in which the landscape splendor of a noble mountain lies.” John Muir [...]

Some of the best American cities are in the Midwest.  Chicago happens to be my favorite city in the US, and Minneapolis, Kansas City, and St. Louis can hold their own.  And even Cleveland—I’ve only been there once, downtown during a 4 hour layover, but the architecture was beautiful, the people friendly, the history everywhere. [...]