Freaking Out Over A Surreal Summer A resident of Martinez, California, in the Bay Area, texted a friend of mine last week: “Looks so creepy outside today!! It’s 10 a.m. and ash is all over the car; all the streetlights are still on and every car has headlights on too!” Another friend in the San … Continued

A Bad, Bad Idea Journalist Matthew Yglesias, co-founder of the progressive website Vox, occasionally has some good ideas. But Yglesias also has some really, really bad ideas, as when he claims the United States is “empty” and advocates in his new book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, for a tripling of the … Continued

In his August 26 article, “California, We Can’t Go On Like This,” The New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo said that “the nation’s most populous state” was also failing to live sustainably. Readers were quick to point out that Manjoo failed to make the connection between the two. Manjoo, who has written in favor of … Continued

“Let heaven and men and devils, let them all, All, all, cry shame against me, yet I’ll speak”–Othello, Vii It’s not the current fashion to acknowledge that the post-1965 wave of immigration has had lasting and deleterious effects on Black Americans, but John Wood, Jr. of Braver Angels goes there on The Darkhorse Podcast from … Continued

The New York Times reports that CO2 emissions from traffic – the leading source of emissions in the United States – have remained “stubbornly high,” and per capita increases are certainly part of the problem. “ven as vehicles have become more efficient,” Nadja Popovich and Denise Lu report, “Americans, buoyed by a strong economy and … Continued

NumbersUSA’s Jeremy Beck (Media Standards Director), Grant Newman (Government Relations Chief of Staff), and Rob Harding (Sustainability Communications Manager) discuss John Oliver’s segment on legal immigration. JEREMY: So John Oliver dedicated one of his popular monologues to legal immigration. He broke down the legal system for immigrants and non-immigrants. What did you think? GRANT: I … Continued

The number one threat to endangered species in the United States — habitat loss — is closely related to the increase in the number of Americans. The destruction of ecosystems often occurs around heavily populated cities, which were established on some of the richest bio-systems the land has to offer. Our expansion literally paves over … Continued

Human Numbers Up, Bird Numbers Down: Not Just a Coincidence Fewer flocks and feathers grace our skies, forests, coasts, grasslands, and deserts these days. A team of scientists writing in the journal Science reports that the number of birds in North America has dwindled by about 30 percent since 1970, or nearly three billion individual … Continued

In today’s polarized America, there are certain “third rail” or “hot potato” issues one just can’t touch without an explosive reaction. They’re too hot to touch, and so most politicians ignore them rather than risk getting burned. Emotionalism, knee-jerk responses, heaping scorn, and scoring cheap political points trump rational deliberation, discussion, and debate. Right and … Continued