On village roads like these -- they’re footpaths, really, being pressed into service as roads -- having a pint-sized car is an advantage. And when gas runs nearly $4 a gallon, in a country where the average income is about $70 a month, it’s no w...

The bottled water industry is feeling hurt. During the last week of one of the steamiest Julys that the U.S. has ever seen, environmental activists and lawmakers in Massachusetts rallied in front of the statehouse to urge Governor Deval Patrick to sp...

Food writer Frederick Kaufman isn’t shy about attacking the role of big business in food production. His July cover story for Harper's was subtitled “How Goldman Sachs and Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It” (tell us what you re...

The federal government's mortgage regulator has re-affirmed its opposition to a federally funded program designed to help homeowners lower their energy costs. In an August 26 letter addressed to Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) and four other House membe...

Sounds like one of those only-in-New York ideas: the clay tennis courts at Riverside Park are about to get carbon-neutral, composting toilets. The thing is, they sound like really nice toilets, especially for athletic facilities. The deluxe, eco-frie...

Michigan, historical home to America's auto industry, is known for cars. And traffic jams, potholes, and urban sprawl that practically forces people to drive. But the power of the Detroit Three major automakers must be slipping, because the state is...

Last fall, I travelled to the Klamath River to see the wild salmon that are clinging to existence in that troubled watershed.  In days of searching, I saw two salmon returning to their spawning grounds.  Two fish.  On different days.  Considering...

When a real estate survey released last week sparked a slew of news stories trumpeting "The Death of the McMansion," it sounded like great news for the environment. After all, smaller homes are more efficient to live in and less resource-intensive...

A few weeks ago, I flew over the Deepwater Horizon site and saw what looked like the opposite of all the news reports: it looked more like somebody had spilled water into a Gulf filled with oil. You don't have to make a personal trip to the Gulf of M...

People in this village, as I mentioned earlier, are a little suspicious of refrigerators. I offered some day-old refrigerated leftovers to Leela, a local housewife who's helping us with the cooking. She politely declined, explaining, "If I feed that...

"War is over," sang John Lennon in different times. "Oil is over," sang The New York Times a week ago Wednesday, heralding those two terrifically reliable sources, NOAA and BP, and letting us know that all was hunky dory down in t...

In Bangalore, the center of India's high-tech industry, bricks and mortar are still very much in evidence. On a single block in a quiet residential neighborhood of this laid back southern Indian city, I spotted four multistory apartment buildings und...

After up to a million gallons of oil spilled into Michigan's Kalamazoo River from an underground pipeline late last month, investigators and local residents focused on concerns about where and when the spill started and what should have been done to...

Photo:  Subharnab Majumdar/flickr Whether you call them feral swine, Russian boars, or a porcine equivalent of the Asian carp, wild pigs have invaded Michigan, say state wildlife officials. A proposal to declare them as an invasive species was rai...

In announcing his new appointments to the U.S. Manufacturing Council on Thursday, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke singled out his pick as the council's new leader, Bruce Sohn. "With Bruce as chair," said Locke, "we're sending a messag...

"Current poyo?" asks a man on a bicycle, seeing our house in darkness. Yes, we tell him, the current has gone. Power outages are a frequent occurrence here in this village in Kerala, on India's palm-fringed southwest coast, where I'm spending a month...

Though nearly two out of every three American voters say it's time our Congress pass a bill “that will limit pollution, invest in domestic energy sources and encourage companies to use and develop clean energy," the Senate has failed to act. &...

Editor's note: Writer David Gessner, a frequent OnEarth contributor, is visiting the Gulf Coast to report on the BP disaster. Follow his journey. I knew pelicans before they were famous.  I started studying them when I first moved to the South, seve...

  A few weeks ago, I drove about an hour from my home in Upstate New York to Dimock, Pennsylvania. Dimock is a tiny town in the midst of green fields and sloping ridgelines--the kind of bucolic countryside that drew me to this region over a deca...

Today's headlines out of the Gulf are all about measurements -- and no matter what ruler you're using, they're all bad. Item:  GULF SPILL IS THE LARGEST OF ITS KIND, SCIENTISTS SAY (The New York Times) Item: DEAD ZONE IN THE GULF ONE OF THE LARGEST...

Editor's note: Writer David Gessner, a frequent OnEarth contributor, is visiting the Gulf Coast to report on the BP disaster. Follow his journey. At Table Three, the Louisiana Spirit Coastal Recovery Counseling Program is handing out blue rubber “s...

Editor's note: Writer David Gessner, a frequent OnEarth contributor, is visiting the Gulf Coast to report on the BP disaster. Follow his journey. <!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal.dotm 0 0 1 1361 7762 NRDC 64 15 9532 12....

Even though the Deepwater Horizon well has been capped and the relief wells are almost finished, the BP oil disaster is far from over. It will take decades to recover from this catastrophe. I don't think people fully realize the scale of the damage:...

Editor's note: Writer David Gessner, a frequent OnEarth contributor, is visiting the Gulf Coast to report on the BP disaster. Follow his journey. <!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal.dotm 0 0 1 2138 10266 NRDC 223 35 14971...

On Thursday four senators introduced legislation that would re-vivify the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program, which helps homeowners finance the high up-front costs of clean energy improvements and retrofits.  This "cash for caulkers...

I live in a quiet corner of New York State. My wife and I chose to raise our children here because we want our children to grow up in its peaceful, pastoral landscape. But the calm that drew us here is about to be shattered by a gold rush in natural...

  We don't realize how good we have it in the United States. Turn on the faucet and clean drinking water comes out. Maybe not the tastiest stuff, depending on where you live, but safe and amazing compared to what you'll find (and won't find) in some...

Editor's note: Writer David Gessner, a frequent OnEarth contributor, is visiting the Gulf Coast to report on the BP disaster. Follow his journey. I am now in the green, beautiful, and paranoid heart of southeastern Louisiana, a sinking land less than...

I have always loved the oceans. My father was a Navy man and one requirement he had for us growing up was that we had to live near a body of saltwater. I was raised listening to foghorns by night and being chased by horseshoe crabs by day. The ocean...

Editor's note: Writer David Gessner, a frequent OnEarth contributor, is visiting the Gulf Coast to report on the BP disaster. Follow his journey. No one is popping champagne down here quite yet.  Pardon the locals if they have become a little d...