By Lewis Diuguid, Kansas City Star Editorial Board Columnist
The warm weather Friday prompted a lot of people to work outdoors. In midtown, Marcus Lee Looney raked leaves in the 3900 block of Forest Avenue and talked about how federal stimulus money for the Green Impact Zone would improve the long-neglected urban community.
By Lewis Diuguid, Kansas City Star Editorial Board Columnist
A new moon cast a strange light on the Kansas flatlands as I drove from Denver to Kansas City on Halloween following a week at a multicultural education convention.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
In a time with so much information and analysis, you crave simple clear information you can use, enjoy, and share. Numerous stations await you on the television, radio, your hand-held, your notebook, your earpiece.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
Mike Sanders presents a compelling and detailed design and study for, what’s being presented as a regional rapid rail (KCR3 as a possible acronym?) system. We can design and build this. But can we as a society change to use it?
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
For those readers who have engaged in the work of peace, those engaged at this moment, the real prize is the work. Those with experience tells us that the work never stops. Collectively we can say that there are many paths to peace. President Obama’s award can be shared with those doing the work.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
This is not an article about dieting, or eating well (whatever your definition of well implies). It seems that food has been a common theme in news, the thread which if followed, may lead us to the secret of human existence. Food may be the code that Dan Brown needs to reconsider. [Have you finished his book yet?]
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
Nothing is ever the same as it was, but to compare Islam’s ongoing internal struggles with the Christian Reformation may foster understanding and apreciation. So, for example, when Ahmadinajad spoke recently, he did not speak to the West, he spoke to believers, to Islamic people everywhere.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
As a reminder, since the summer has been quite busy with health care policy development, unemployment, economy bottom-watching, and race-rooted debate, Afghanistan…the centerpiece policy of the Obama administration is nuclear disarmament.
He gave us a reminder yesterday, when he scrapped the missile defense intiative.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
There's a limit, it turns out, to how far even Seattle residents will go in being green.
Voters Tuesday handily rejected an initiative for grocery stores to charge 20 cents for every plastic and paper bag provided to customers.
By Lewis Diuguid, Kansas City Star Editorial Board Columnist
Sometimes Missouri lawmakers get it right.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
Jay Nixon and Mark Templeton have some serious explaining to do to the people of Missouri.
Will Gov. Nixon insist that Templeton, his hand-picked director of the Department of Natural Resources, act consistently and transparently to inform the public about environmental problems?
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
It's encouraging that Barack Obama is not a do-nothing president like George W. Bush when it comes to climate change.
But Obama's rhetoric Thursday on the issue at the G-8 Summit was a little shaky, even empty in some ways.
By Larry Marsh, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist
Unhappy with American politics? Looking to start your own country? There's plenty of land under the oceans, we just need to extract oxygen from water and use tightly sealed vehicles and housing.
They'll start out as undersea "cottages" for wealthy people with glass domes in areas with exotic fish providing a "cool" getaway for those bored with their 60-foot yachts. As these rich enclaves grow so will the political implications of their existence.
By Matthew Schofield, a member of The Star's Editorial Board
A new report, by academics at the London School of Economics and Oxford, claims "cap and trade" carbon reduction policy is failing, and will continue to fail.
In fact, the report state that a policy intended to reduce carbom is actually increasing the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere.
By E. Thomas McClanahan, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Democrats say the cap-and-trade bill passed by the House last week will accelerate the transition to an energy-efficient economy. Loads of new “green” jobs will be created in the process.
President Barack Obama says this will be a “driver of economic growth.”
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Have to side with the environmentalists on this one: The EPA made the right call in demanding that Sunflower Electric apply for a new state permit to build a coal-fired power plant in western Kansas.
By Bob Sommer, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices panelist
“Coal is the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet.”
Dr. James Hansen
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Democratic lawmakers Tuesday went too far currying favor with Midwesterner farmers and ethanol producers in efforts to pass a climate change bill.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
The government's newest global warming report is a compelling call to action.
Unlike George Bush's administration, President Barack Obama isn't going to ignore climate change and its effects on the U.S. and the world.
Thank goodness.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Barack Obama rightly wants to aggressively attack global warming by reducing the release of greenhouse gas emissions that help cause it.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
The Obama administration has just slapped down environmentalists and others intent on saving polar bears.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has decided to keep a Bush administration policy that spits in the eye of the global warming believers.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
President Barack Obama appears ready to make the same mistake former President George W. Bush did: Go overboard in promoting ethanol's costly production.
This week the Obama administration has been out in force defending ethanol.
Kit BondBy Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
U.S. Sen. Kit Bond has just put out a report that will irritate tree-huggers everywhere.
Still, it's well worth reading by environmentalists -- as well as Bond's fellow conservatives who think the country is wasting tons of money with some of its "green" investments.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Years of anti-environmental rules approved by the Bush administration are being wiped out by President Barack Obama. And that's a good thing.
In recent days, Obama has shown he's going to do more to protect the environment than Bush did in his eight years in office.
For example:
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Finally, the United States appears ready to be a leader rather than a sullen nonparticipant when it comes to global climate policies.
Earth Day offers great opportunities to protect the environment — as well as our pocketbooks.
Some of the tried-and-true steps really do work: Recycle and reuse, drive less and ride the bus more often, install programmable thermostats, take reusable shopping bags to grocery stores, pay bills online.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
If you enjoyed a Hershey's Kisses chocolate candy lately, you're not alone. The company makes 80 million Kisses a day, making it a popular candy.
Now for the Earth Day-related question: Did you recycle the candy's distinctive aluminum foil wrappers?
By Bart King, Special to The Kansas City Star
The first Earth Day, held on April 22, 1970, rallied 20 million Americans, who believed the environment wasn’t receiving the attention it deserved in national politics. It gave a single voice to numerous grass roots movements protesting oil spills, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides and loss of wilderness.
President Barack Obama has breathed new life into this nation’s environmental movement, which helps make this year’s Earth Day more notable.
Obama’s administration already has shown it will aggressively protect the environment and promote renewable energy far more than the last administration.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
President Barack Obama has pledged to tackle the problem of global warming and humans' contribution to it. Good thing, too, because a new survey of scientists confirms climate change is happening.
