The Upper Mississippi, endangered red wolves, & Florida fires
As I walked across the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca in Minnesota, I couldn’t help but think about the Gulf of Mexico. The…
Rate hikes, border zones, & Walter Anderson’s landscapes
When the board of directors for Tennessee Valley Authority—the country’s largest public power utility that serves 9 million people in seven Southern states—unanimously approved a new “grid…
The biomass debacle, West Virginia’s déjà vu, & the dangers of offshore drilling
At a meeting with forest industry leaders in Cochran, Georgia last month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that burning biomass, like trees, to produce…
Cookie-cutter bills, the walk from Selma to Montgomery, & restricted beaches
Quietly, during the first few weeks of 2018, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful conservative lobbying organization, finalized model legislation for the “Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.” The bill…
Coal ash rules, industrial hemp, & teacher strikes
When a dike ruptured at the Kingston coal plant in Roane County, Tennessee a decade ago, it released more than a billion gallons of wet, gray coal…