Articles by Sarah Laskow

Critical List: Perry not afraid to sound like an idiot; Koch Industries trading with Iran

"I'm not afraid to say I'm a skeptic about [climate change]." -- Rick Perry, ladies and gentlemen. So fearless.

A Bloomberg investigation found that Koch Industries has paid bribes to obtain contracts and sold Iran petrochemical equipment, in violation of the U.S. trade ban.

Trees are nice. Probably not a great idea to destroy them all.

If you have an electric toothbrush, extra-large fridge, laptop, iPad, iPhone, multiple flat screen TVs, a flat screen monitor, and god knows what else -- you're killing us here!

Canada probably didn’t NEED that ice sheet, right?

If you thought you were melting over the summer, just be glad you're not an ice sheet that's been chilling out since before Europeans settled in Canada. Over the summer, two huge Canadian ice shelves in the Arctic shrunk down precipitously, report scientists from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. One sheet had already split into two sections and just kept getting smaller; the other broke in half this year. Icebergs are breaking away and "pose a risk to offshore oil facilities and potentially to shipping lanes," reports the Associated Press. "Since the end of July, pieces equaling one and a half times to the size of Manhattan Island have broken off."

This is not normal behavior for an ice shelf this large and old, says the AP:

Critical List: MIT recreates photosynthesis; City of Austin goes 100 percent renewable

MIT created an "artificial leaf" that recreates photosynthesis.

In Germany, they've got so much wind-generated electricity, they’re giving it away.

Driving 75 mph isn't fuel efficient, ahem, Maine.

Austin's going to be the largest local government using only renewable energy to power its municipal buildings.

Company that created Alaskan ‘dead zone’ has to pay to clean it up

Dumping buckets of fish guts into the ocean turns out not to be so good for the ecosystems involved. Basically, the more dead fish you put in the water, the fewer live fish can survive there. Off the coast of Alaska, one seafood processor has created "a massive wasteland of fish guts about 50 acres or more … a dead zone."

The processor, Seattle-based Trident, now has to pay $30 to 40 million to clean up its mess (plus, stop dumping so many damn fish innards into the sea).