Culture & Ethics
Paper or Plastic…or Neither?
Paul Koretz is a Los Angeles City Councilmember who represents most of the city’s west side (including UCLA) and large chunks of the San Fernando Valley. And he’s got a proposal that environmentalists love: Hoping to reduce the billions of grocery bags circulating throughout the city, an L.A. councilman Tuesday called for a sweeping ban …
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CONTINUE READINGFrom the Language Police Blotter
What is the plural of “Prius”? Many people I know say “Prii,” but a professional writer friend, who knows about language, insists that because “Prius” is not actually a Latin word, it has to be “Priuses.” In the movie The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg’s antagonists are known as “the Winklevii” although they certainly were not …
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CONTINUE READINGSustainability and the Pursuit of Happiness
There’s a common vision of environmentalism that mostly involves giving things up, the basic image being one of ascetic sacrifice for the benefit of the environment and future generations. Some people actually are ascetics, and most people are willing to make big sacrifices in emergencies. But by and large, people aren’t willing to give up …
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CONTINUE READINGInfill Parking Bill Killed by Local Government Lobby?
When last we checked on AB 710, the California bill to eliminate minimum parking requirements for infill and transit-oriented projects, it sailed through Assembly committees and eventually passed that body unanimously, 78-0. And why not? The bill offers both environmental and economic benefits: by removing inefficient minimum parking requirements on transit-adjacent developments, more projects could …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat Is Green Kosher?
“Green Kosher” is the new advertising tag for Empire Kosher food processors, based in rural Pennsylvania. But what does it mean? There is an important backstory here. Empire is the nation’s leading kosher poultry producer, which has aggressively pursued a progressive image in the media (and particularly the Jewish media). It has done this even …
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CONTINUE READINGA Judicial Win for PACE Clean Energy Financing
Finally, some good news from the courts for advocates of PACE financing for energy efficiency and renewables. Federal Judge Claudia Wilken in the Northern District of California issued a ruling late Friday on the Federal Housing Finance Authority’s (FHFA) motion to dismiss a challenge from the Sierra Club, Placer and Sonoma Counties, Palm Desert, and …
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CONTINUE READINGQuest for the Best
Public Health Degree has a list of the twenty cities in the world with the cleanest air. (I was pleased to see my prior home Minneapolis on the list — not surprisingly, my current home in the Bay Area didn’t qualify.) That got me interested in looking for other listings of high environmental quality. There …
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CONTINUE READINGEnviro Videos
Public Policy Degree, a site aimed at policy students, has assembled fifty YouTube videos relating to the environment. Besides being fun, it may give the more tech-savvy teachers among our audience some resources to include in presentations. I noticed that one of the videos is by former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, who is now teaching …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Environmental Journalism Issue in the Presidential Race
There is one enormously striking thing about the New York Times article that Dan references in the post below. The article details how virtually all the Republican candidates have essentially declared war on the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming that environmental regulation is responsible for job losses and sluggish growth. It also quotes people from Republicans for …
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CONTINUE READING“Please Don’t Murder Me”
Musical accompaniment to Justin’s post below. “I cut my deck to the Queen of Spades, but the cards were all the same”: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhqyg_dTaTg] More information here.
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