Climate Culture

Hitting the Nader on the Head

Wow! Did I ever infuriate my liberal friends when I said I would vote for Ralph Nader! [See Won’t You Be My Nader?.] They’ve been hammering me with earnest lectures […]

Zed, last of his species, in "The Right to Arm Bears"

Zed, last of his species, in "Summa Cum Loud"

Lawnmower Man

How far can clean cars take us?

I loved cars long before I knew there was any reason to worry about their effect on the environment or be concerned about the smoke that poured from their tailpipes. In the 1960s, ignorance like mine was widespread in the United States, maintained by a powerful automotive lobby and a complacent federal government. Highway congestion, though already bad, was somewhat masked by an expanding national highway grid, and most people celebrated the migration to the suburbs that the new roads aided and abetted. Cars were equated with freedom, and ads of the period showed happy vacationing families riding in roomy sedans, with the uncrowded interstate stretching out in front of them.

Menopause and Green Power

Zed, last of his species, in "Why Cowboy Boots Were Invented"

Zed, last of his species, in "Big Weenie Politics"

How the U.S. government could push solar power into the big time

The environmental movement has displayed remarkable strength since the first Earth Day in 1970. It has battled heroically to safeguard the world's health, diversity, and beauty, and it has been astonishingly successful. However, as the Earth's odometer rolls over into a new century, the Earth is facing a new threat -- global warming -- that dwarfs earlier perils.

Zed, last of his species, in "Sideshow at the Media Circus"