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Big, Ambitious Plans From Smaller-Town Leaders
In a few days, the May issue of the magazine will arrive for subscribers ( ! ) and appear on newsstands. It includes…
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Can Non-Billionaires Make a Difference in Conservation? An Example From Europe
Late last week, I mentioned a historically large conservation gift, worth $165 million and coming from one of America’s successful…
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Action at the Local Level, D.C. Edition
As I mentioned yesterday in another note on Erie, Pennsylvania, I’ll try to send out some reports on still-functional local-level…
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What the Renewable-Energy Economy Looks Like
At its peak, nearly one century ago in 1920, the coal-mining industry employed nearly 800,000 people in the United…
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New Hope for the Devil
No, despite the title, this is not a U.S.-politics item. Three years ago I did an…
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Trump Time Capsule #6: There Is No California Drought
Daily Trump #6: May 27, 2016. Drought? What drought? The rains of the past El Nino season have…
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Ken Burns, on the American Prairie Reserve
I’ve mentioned several times how interested I’ve been in the American Prairie Reserve, in northern Montana. (And, yes…
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On National Beer Day, Craft Brewers Improving Water, and Life, in More Ways Than One
Thanks to my Atlantic colleague Kathy Gilsinan for the reminder of why today is different from all other days: It’s…
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The Sociology of the Modern American Urban Landscape, Cont'd
We’ve had a lot of development on the scientific, public-health, technology, and local-government front since the previous reports in this…
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Orbital View: All the Ships at Sea
Just because it's interesting and beautiful, take a look at this visualization of shipping traffic around the world. It’s…
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LA: City of Tomorrow
The ongoing theme in this thread involves “hastening the inevitable.” That is, speeding the transition from the very noisy…
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Our Newest National Monument, From the Air
In our American Futures section, I’ve just described President Obama’s creation today of three new National Monuments. You can read…
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Jack Thompson for the Wildlands Conservancy Welcome Our Newest National Monuments!
Often it seems that modern presidents can’t do anything — except wage war. Here’s a heartening exception.
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Ted Cruz Is Right. Yes, That Ted Cruz
Clare Foran reported on our site yesterday about the rapidly intensifying Ted Cruz-Donald Trump grudge match in Iowa. (Bonus essay…
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The Future of Leafblowers: The Guardian Weighs In
I’ll begin my emergence from a long bout of print-magazine writing by mentioning an article by Lawrence Richards, in The…
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Stephane Mahe / Reuters Obama: Chessmaster, not Pawn
Many of the president’s supporters fear that he hasn’t really known what he is doing. Many of his critics worry that he is all-too-skillful at attaining his ends. There’s increasing evidence that the critics may be right.
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Technology Can't Solve Every Problem, but It Sure Helps With This One (Leafblower Dept)
In this space I’ve been reporting developments in local D.C. citizen-action efforts to phase out the super-polluting, uniquely noisy…
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Mapping Climate Change: Ways to Envision What's Happened Already, and What Is to Come
As the climate talks open in Paris, here is an instructive set of “story maps” from our friends and…
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Al Gore, Felix Salmon, ‘Sustainability,’ and Aspiration
On the eve of the Paris climate talks, let’s get back to “sustainable capitalism.” After my piece about…
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Request for Community Reports on Leafblower Policies
On Wednesday night, as reported here, our local Advisory Neighborhood Commission in Washington voted 8-1 to support a shift from…
