Climate
Back Into the ‘Underground’
During dress rehearsal Wednesday night, co-choreographer Tobin James of Storling Dance Theater’s “Underground” at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts struggled to speak. Sick, exhausted, her voice shot, she breathed deep as she watched the final rehearsal from a dark corner offstage. Twenty rows back in the sixteen hundred seat auditorium, co-choreographer Mona Enna…
The Other Natural Gas: Making Energy From Waste
Every day, a facility on the outskirts of Grand Junction, Colorado takes in eight million gallons of what people have flushed down their toilets and washed down their sinks. The water coming out the other end of the Persigo Wastewater Treatment Plant is cleaner than the Colorado River it flows into. The organic solids strained from…
5 Questions with Lidia Bastianich
Editor’s Note: Jonathan Bender is founder of the Recommended Daily, a sponsor of Kansas City Restaurant Week. This is not a sponsored post. Lidia Bastianich has been coming into people’s homes for nearly 20 years. But she doesn’t come empty-handed, she always arrives with an easy smile, a few encouraging words, and a bowl of…
Climate Change: Why Pope Francis Considers It a Crisis
As the United Nations climate change summit wraps up this weekend in Paris, three local groups sponsored a gathering at Queen of the Holy Rosary Church in Overland Park to discuss Pope Francis’s call for action on the environment (Laudato Sí), and to learn what action they can take locally to combat global warming. The Kanza…
Sounding Smarter
At the Climate Summit in Paris, Leonardo DiCaprio delivered a powerful speech about the dangers of global warming. Afterwards, Leo got into a private jet, flew to one of his several mansions and spent some time chilling on a giant yacht. Coca-Cola said on Friday that it may have to close some bottling plants in India if the government…
EPA Increases Mandate For Ethanol
The amount of ethanol blended into the U.S. fuel supply will go up under new rules issued Monday. In releasing the details of the Renewable Fuel Standard, the policy that sets the amount of biofuels oil refiners must blend into the fuel supply, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it planned to continue to increase the…
What Is The Carbon Footprint Of A Typical Thanksgiving Dinner?
Mike Berners-Lee may not be an expert on the American Thanksgiving. A native of the UK, he’s never actually had the pleasure of experiencing one. But as one of the world’s leading researchers on the carbon footprint of—well—everything (he even wrote a book subtitled “The Carbon Footprint of Everything”), he’s plenty familiar with the impacts of…
Farmers school themselves on soil health to revive dying dirt
Generations of tilling and planting on the same land have left the nation’s soil in poor shape. And if farmers don’t change the way they grow crops, feeding the future won’t be easy. As farmer Jordan Shearer from Slapout, Okla., puts it, “we’re creating a desert environment by plowing the damn ground.” Taking a toll…
Cargill Executive Says Climate Change Threatens Food Production
Climate change is real and must be addressed head-on to prevent future food shortages. That’s the message Cargill Executive Director Greg Page delivered Monday night to an audience at Kansas State University in Manhattan. “Climate change is not a particularly popular subject in much of the heartland,” he said. “But at Cargill, we have come to believe…









