Vermont is a wildly different place than it was a year ago. On the one hand, rising oil prices are driving us towards calamity — $5 a gallon home heating oil is completely imaginable this coming winter, and that would break the back of many budgets already laboring with $4 a gallon for gasoline. And in a world where the average bite travels a couple of thousand miles to reach your lips, food prices rise in tandem with petroleum.... Read more

I remember so well the final morning hours of the Kyoto conference. The negotiations had gone on long past their scheduled evening close, and the convention-center management was frantic — a trade show for children’s clothing was about to begin, and every corner of the vast hall still was littered with the carcasses of the sleeping diplomats who had gathered in Japan to draw up a first-ever global treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. But when word finally came that an agreement had been reached, people roused themselves with real enthusiasm — lots of backslapping and hugs.... Read more

On the Monday before Election Day, a group of about 30 protesters walked across the bridge at Crown Point, carrying signs asking International Paper to stop its test burn of tires. It was as much a dirge as a protest: The first scraps of rubber were being shoveled into the furnace even as we walked. As on so many fronts in recent years, it appeared that environmentalists had lost one more battle. The signs might as well have said "Kick Me."

What a difference two weeks can make. Turns out this is going to be the greenest Thanksgiving in a very long time. Here's what's on the menu:... Read more

In case you wonder if the level of American consumption really matters, consider these statistics assembled by ecological economist Lester Brown. Given current rates of growth in the Chinese economy, by 2031 the 1.3 billion residents of that nation will be about as rich as we are. If they then ate meat, milk and eggs in the same quantities as we do, they'd consume 1352 million tons of grain -- equal to two-thirds of the world's entire 2004 grain harvest. They'd use 99 million barrels of oil a day, 20 million more than the entire world presently consumes.... Read more

Being a relative newcomer to Vermont has certain advantages, including the right to ask stupid questions. Here's one of mine: Why aren't Vermont's Progressives and Democrats doing something to heal their rift, before they allow the Republicans to fill Bernie Sanders' Congressional seat this fall?... Read more

For many years, the Craftsbury marathon was a ski race, pure and simple. A couple of hundred hardcore racers would show up every January for the privilege of covering 50 kilometers. Then, four years ago, race director John Brodhead had a thought: Since the race snaked past several of the Northeast Kingdom's finest inns, why not also offer a touring division -- one that would stop every five kilometers or so for a gourmet trailside snack?... Read more

Thursday, October 23. The first measurable snow of the fall collected in our field this morning. Always a signal day, the unofficial beginning of what seems to me the proper part of the year. I am aware that more people await the first crocus of spring, or the first robin on the lawn, but in fact at this latitude, spring and summer are the exception. There are only about four months a year when the leaves are green, and another few weeks when they're ablaze. Their natural state is gray, skeletal. And the ground is supposed to be white, crystalline.... Read more