At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
MADISON, WI – I turn 70 today. How old is that? My mind is an active archive, like a film festival of mid-century classics. I remember scenes from the 1950s. Not vaguely — vividly. Faces, voices, color, sound. I was only a few months past two, for instance, still in diapers, when I bolted straight out the front door of our home in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., and into the middle of Shady Lane. Heading my …
Behold the “No Kings” protests last month. Millions of Americans in the streets opposing the Trump administration’s reckless governing principles. Thousands of communities expressing the solemn right to push back against a clear and present danger. At least for the time being. For real. As public attention is diverted by the daily diet of strategically outrageous presidential distractions, fossil fuel companies and their industrial allies have been quietly advancing a new form of corporate vigilantism. …
Until May 2025, utility executives like those at Consumers Energy in Michigan operated in the world of orderly oversight of electricity generation. In coordination with MISO, the regional transmission agency, and the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC), Consumers Energy decided when to build new power plants to meet energy demand. When plants grew old and too costly to operate, as happened with the coal-fired J.H. Campbell Generating Station in western Michigan, Consumers collaborated with MISO …
With Donald Trump, there isn’t the thinnest layer of respect for America’s 60-year legacy of environmental protection. For crying out loud, Richard Nixon, of all the commanders in chief, established the Environmental Protection Agency. In the first hours of his second term Trump signed 40 executive orders. Six of those January 2025 actions were specifically intended to wreak industrial havoc on water, air, wild habitat, and oceans, and were largely directed at aiding fossil fuel producers …
The practice of reporting on the environment starts with a working knowledge of a range of scientific disciplines. One of them is chemistry. To wit: since the 1960s, when Americans and visionary lawmakers voted to hold polluters accountable for their wastes, a specific chemical pollutant has emerged in each decade as the leading environmental and public health menace prompting legal and political action. The pollutants of primary interest in the 2020s, for instance, are PFAS, …
COVERT TOWNSHIP, MICH. – As a study in troubled operation, the Palisades Nuclear Plant once was ranked by the federal government as one of the four worst-performing nuclear plants in the country. The 51-year old plant closed in 2022, joining the Big Rock Point nuclear plant near Charlevoix and 11 others decommissioned outside Michigan in what appeared to represent the sunset of the era of splitting atoms to produce electricity. Not so fast. Sometime in …
SEATTLE – One of this Pacific Coast city’s newest apartment buildings is the eight-story Fremont View. Set in Seattle’s bohemian Fremont neighborhood, the $12.75 million project encompasses 29 airy and well-lit apartments that rise from a tight 9,600-square foot city lot. What makes such a tall and compact multi-family residence possible is a crucial design feature allowed by Seattle’s building code: the apartment’s single staircase. Until 2024 allowing one staircase in multi-family buildings more …
The U.S. Senate this week is poised to vote on a narrowly-cast resolution intended to clear a new pathway to eventually open a long-disputed copper mine close to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeast Minnesota. There’s a lot more, though, riding on the Senate vote, and not just for a region of the American north country adored for its towering pines, and deep, clear waters. If it’s approved and signed by President Trump, …
Late last month, Jonathan Fisher, one of the good people devoted to changing the world, got in touch to pitch me on a “participatory photography” project. Fisher was born and raised in Bronx, New York, and after spending much of his life helping manage the New York City subway system, he switched tracks. In 2010 Fisher joined another retired transit colleague, George Carrano, to help start Seeing For Ourselves, a nonprofit that “equips and trains marginalized …
Three years ago Chris Jones was a decorated research engineer at the University of Iowa, where he directed Iowa’s network of stream pollution monitors and published details about state water quality in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Secure in his academic perch in 110-year-0ld Trowbridge Hall, Jones also contributed to his university-sponsored blog, where he prepared aggressive, masterfully written, and widely read reports that identified agriculture as the primary source of the state’s calamitous water pollution. In …
