Featured Stories

Coronavirus and our relationship with nature

As I sit down to write this, it is Passover and Easter weekend. The world has suddenly and collectively been united by the spread of sickness and death from the coronavirus. I am not a religious person, but I find myself contemplating the forces of good and evil and wondering if we have perhaps entered a time of hell on earth. Or is it a time for redemption?.​
Toxic Exposure
When her kids were young, Tracey Woodruff knew more than most people about environmental toxics. After all, she was a senior scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But even she never dreamed, as she rocked her children to sleep at night, that the plastic baby bottles she used to feed them contained toxic chemicals that could leach into the warm milk. 
FLICKR USER THOMAS ANGERMANN

Greening of Chinatown

The Washington Bakery & Restaurant in San Francisco is a place where you can get a steaming hot wonton soup or a nice piece of cake and a cup of tea. With a few older Chinese neighbors chatting in Cantonese and reading the paper at small Formica tables, you won’t find your typical San Francisco cold filtered locally roasted fair trade coffee here. And you won’t ever, if Cindy Wu has her way. (She simply orders the hot water with lemon.)​
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Photo:  Michael Woolsey

Coming Home

Years ago, before he was born, Jim McIsaac’s family had a couple of deer hound pups named Cloudy and Thunder. One day the pups took off up to Black Mountain. Jim’s dad rode up there on a horse, found them and brought them back on his saddle.

Like Black Mountain, Jim’s father, Neil McIsaac, looms large over this 527-acre ranch on Point Reyes-Petaluma Road in West Marin. Jim was only five years old when his family was forced to leave here for the construction of Nicasio Reservoir, but he does remember it. In fact, it’s sort of burned in his memory just like the vivid family memory of his dad riding down off Black Mountain with the lost pups on his saddle.

How resilience will shape the future of building design

By Molly Miller

​Hurricanes, flooding droughts, wildfires, landslides and terrorism.
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These are the issues we’ll be addressing next in green design — if you buy into the theory that the U.S. Green Building Council’s ubiquitous LEED program helps predict future trends. Past LEED pilot credits have revealed issues we’ve neglected, such as water, transit, acoustics, ergonomics and lighting pollution.

 Solar gives Fresno union apprentices a foot
in the door 

By Molly Miller

​At 3:30 in the morning, Norma Alvarado leaves her home in the Tower District neighborhood of Fresno and drives almost two hours to Bakersfield. She wears steel-toed shoes and she brings her hard hat, her tool belt and her lunch.
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She clocks in at 5:25 a.m. and starts her day at a safety meeting with 119 other workers from the Fresno Ironworkers Union Local 155. 

Circularity in Cities is about equity, too

By Molly Miler

Imagine walking down main street America and, instead of cookie-cutter chains, box stores and endless cars, you find a place full of exciting activity — pedestrians, regional food, local character and culture. "It’s all possible. You find it in cities all over the world," says Jeff Mendelsohn, founder of New Leaf paper, and more recently LocalCode, which supports the formation of healthy communities with thriving main streets.