AlterNet

David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance wonders if the economic crisis will see alternative energy fall off the political agenda, or if the next president will recognize the economic benefits of renewable energy investments.

Joseph Nocera reports on a proposal to rescue homeowners that lets people live in their homes, and doesn't require any government money.

The wetlands and barrier islands of Louisiana -- nature's way of absorbing tidal surges during tropical storms -- are almost gone. We may not be able to restore them.

Los Angelenos have long forgotten that they live in a desert, but the coming drought will mean water consumption patterns will need to change on a massive scale writes Scott Thill.

Whether through community gardening or high-tech "vertical farms" interest is growing in urban agriculture.

Humanity has over-engineered the world's hydrology through dam-building, writes Rachel Olivieri.

Most of the news coverage concerning the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has failed to note the history: Until 1968, FNMA had always been nationalized.

Decades of massive hydrologic engineering have altered California's ecology out of equilibrium and will be unable to support present demands, warns Rachel Olivieri.

The enormous traffic in imported goods is generating a huge amount of disease-causing pollution in and around ports, and along trade routes.

With America facing a $1.6 trillion infrastructure deficit, Joanna Guldi of the Commonweal Institute laments for the era the "infrastructure state."

Homeowner Associations have traditionally frowned on eco-friendly additions such as clotheslines. Recent legal challenges may change the rules.

We shouldn't be blaming biofuel production for rising food prices and environmental degradation while ignoring the immense harm of industrial meat production, writes Frances Cerra Whittelsey.

Rolling Stone pundit Matt Taibbi writes that the media are missing the real story: that millions of Americans are financially drowning under home heating costs, gas prices and debt, and the middle class is disappearing.

A proposal to annually burn tens of millions of car tires to produce electricity at a facility in Erie, Pennsylvania is raising concerns among environmentalists and regional residents over mercury and other emissions.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has resolved to phase out purchasing bottled water, not only for environmental reasons, but as a way of encouraging more financial support for municipal water systems.

Climate change, desertification and resource wars are displacing millions of people, and threaten to turn us all into environmental refugees, warns Scott Thill.

America is reaching the limits of its water supply, signaling a need to change urban development, energy and agricultural practices, writes Shiney Varghese of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Ruben Anderson suggests that if automobile parking could be kept to properties, that could free up the former on-street parking to become Garden Streets, so that cities could grow much more of their own produce.

Despite official calls following the 1993 floods along the Mississippi to remove development from flood plains, more housing and retail developments continue to be built along vulnerable areas.

James Howard Kuntsler muses on how the end of cheap oil will mean the parallel decline of the suburban sprawl economy of the South and its NASCAR subculture.