Check out this trailer for the film “Gasland,” a documentary film that explores the underside of a natural gas extraction process known as “fracking.” The premise: “The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a “Saudi Arabia [...]

Tom Friedman told Planet Forward’s own Frank Sesno that absent the “perfect storm” (an event so serious as to end the debate but not end the world), serious climate/energy legislation would have no chance of getting passed through Congress. Well, in light of the crisis in the Gulf, it is hard to imagine any event closer [...]

It strikes me as odd that in the moment the President calls the nation to action, appealling for unprecedented cooperation to advance a legislative solution to the crisis in the gulf, the nation is already divided over the substance of the speech and over how well the President delivered the message. Okay, so maybe the [...]

Just last week I was talking with one of my Planet Forward colleagues about the similarities I observed between the BP oil spill and recent financial crisis. Having spent the better part of the past year researching the financial crisis for my thesis, I was struck by the recurrent themes in both crises. In a [...]

When planning the 2010 Olympic games, the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) committed itself to fulfilling a “triple bottom line” – an effort to ensure that the games are not only economically sound but socially and environmentally responsible too. A tremendous amount of media coverage has been dedicated to critiquing VANOCs success in meeting their [...]

Much has been written about the unseasonably warm weather Vancouver has been experiencing. While it has caused much peril and pain for Olympic organizers and athletes alike, the ordinary Olympic fan couldn’t ask for anything more. I can attest as a Vancouver native that there is nothing quite as spectacular as the sparkling water and glistening [...]

It has been hard to escape the amount of coverage dedicated in recent weeks to Vancouver’s curious lack of snow. It seems that Vancouver is the first city in history to host the “Spring” Olympics. While Vancouver is known to be among the mildest climates in Canada, the lack of snow on the North Shore Mountains [...]