Green Economy | ModeShift

Iowa Campaigns Pivot on Farming Perils

by Keith SchneiderOctober 15, 2026October 15, 20260

TIPTON, Iowa – Democrats filed into the Cedar County party headquarters late last month to hear Chris Jones, the Democratic candidate for state agriculture secretary, propose the most aggressive agenda for curbing pollution and human disease from the crop and livestock sectors ever uttered by a candidate running for a statewide office in Iowa. In order to sharply reduce the billions of pounds of nutrients causing Iowa’s worst-in-the-nation water quality, and address the fastest-in-the-nation increase …

Kansas Prairie Festival Celebrates Agriculture That Protects Soil, Water, and Communities

by Keith SchneiderOctober 5, 2026October 5, 20260

SALINA, Kan. – In 1976, Wes and Dana Jackson launched The Land Institute as a nonprofit school to teach a small group of students ways to grow food that respected nature, conserved energy and water, and managed wastes. As one of the nation’s first regional nonprofit environmental and farm research organizations devoted to land stewardship, the Institute set sail in the powerful current of alternative ideas and new organizations in that era that were determined …

Jason Rowntree’s Cattle Grazing Practices Enhance Water and Environmental Quality

by Keith SchneiderAugust 16, 2024August 16, 20240

LAKE CITY, MI – Two facts about Michigan agriculture are scarcely recognized outside the fences and beyond the drainage ditches of the state’s 45,000 farms. The first: farming is among the most technologically sophisticated industrial sectors in Michigan and every other state. Second: livestock farms are the state’s largest source of water pollution from toxic nitrates and phosphorus, and air pollution from methane, a powerful climate change gas. Here on Michigan State University’s 1,100-acre livestock …

Platte River Park, A Natural Resource Treasure, Opens in Benzie County

by Keith SchneiderMay 21, 2024May 30, 20241

HONOR, Michigan — From the place where it slips out of Lake Ann in Benzie County’s northeast corner, Platte River haunts a landscape of forest and open fields, steals past this village of 330 residents, crosses a mighty and silent wetland, fills a big lake, and then, nearly 30 miles from where it started, reaches a curved sand inlet where it empties into Lake Michigan. One of the 49 blue ribbon trout streams in Michigan’s …

Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Is Grand Tribute To Earth Day 2021

by Keith SchneiderApril 21, 2021April 24, 20210

AUDUBON, N.J. — On March 31, you probably heard, President Joe Biden introduced a $2.2 trillion proposal to repair and modernize America’s transportation system, invest in research and technology, and expand the industrial sectors that are curbing climate change. By themselves, those provisions make Biden’s American Jobs Plan a great leap forward in how the White House regards its responsibilities to nature, and to the nation. Biden’s impressive plan, though, is considerably more expansive and …

Idaho’s Silver Valley: A Story of Wealth, Tragedy, and Transformation

by Keith SchneiderAugust 12, 2020August 27, 20202

KELLOGG, Idaho — Completed at a cost of $30 million and opened in 2004, the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes cuts a paved path across Northern Idaho, from Mullan to Plummer, following the course of a long-abandoned Union Pacific line. One of the country’s magnificent rails-to-trails, it’s ordained by natural flourishes that exist in abundance in this part of the Mountain West — tall peaks, forests of fir and spruce, big farm fields, wetlands, clear …

From The Global Garden of Embryonic Hope, Safeguarding Oceans

by Keith SchneiderJune 27, 2020July 1, 20201

Sylvia Earle, the renowned marine biologist and oceanographer, once called oceans â€œthe real world bank.â€ She cautioned that people were making many more withdrawals than deposits.Â On June 10, National Geographic and several more prominent science and conservation organizations convened EarthX Ocean to elaborate on that point. During the two-day virtual conference experts from around the world described the urgent and deteriorating conditions of the oceans and spotlighted a number of useful responses. I was asked …

Singapore Knocked As A “Police State.” In This Era It’s A Virtue

by Keith SchneiderApril 28, 2018April 28, 20184

SINGAPORE — Michael Fay was a 19-year-old American student in May 1994 when Singapore authorities delivered four strikes to his bare bottom with a rattan cane. Arrested nearly a year before for stealing road signs and vandalizing vehicles, Fay’s caning prompted an international debate about the fairness of Singapore’s justice system and an outcry about its “police state” tactics. I knew two facts about Singapore before I arrived here. First was the debate about Michael …

Regina Lopez: Update From The Philippines

by Keith SchneiderJuly 12, 2017August 13, 20202

Gina Lopez, the former Philippines Environment Secretary, sent a message here this week that updates her activities following the Congress decision in May to remove her from office. “I’m now into this movement called ILOVE: Investments in Loving Organizations for Village Economies. The goal is to build the country from the bottom up. I am in the midst of collaborating with 20 million youth as a citizen’s lawsuit is filed against the government. Will send …

Amid Global Pivot, Ghost Dancing in American Coal Fields

by Keith SchneiderMarch 31, 2017March 31, 20170

SOMERSET, KY — There are reasons to feel empathy for the ghost dancers in America’s coal fields. Like the Plains tribes of the late 19th century, the men and women that supply the nation’s steadily eroding demand for coal raise closed fists of anguish, dance in circles, and call on false prophets for help. An industrial culture is dying. Unyielding, era-altering market and technology trends are running coal’s usefulness for supplying electricity to the ground. …