Sarah Laskow

Matt Yglesias asked yesterday if we’re ready to accept cheaper health care if it’s as almost as good as the health care we’re paying for now. I’m ready to raise my hand and say that yes, I would, because, in my particular case, at least, I think that cheaper health care that sacrificed quality on […]

Dave Weigel doesn’t think much of green jobs. In this snarky-ish post about a green-jobs panel he attended at the Aspen Festival of Ideas, he writes that “the problem for green jobs was that they didn’t seem to exist” and scoffs a bit at one speaker’s assertion that green jobs are under attack: Questions were […]

In the new issue of The Washington Monthly, Phillip Longman makes a strong case that America doesn’t need high-speed rail so much as higher-speed rail that arrives on time and at more frequent intervals. Here’s the crux of his argument: Increasing speeds on the slowest segments of the line would do as much or more […]

Earlier this month, the National Trust for Historic Preservation released its [annual list of most endangered historic places](http://www.preservationnation.org/about-us/press-center/press-releases/2011/2011-list-11-most.html). Most of these places are suffering from lack of funds and attention, and one “place” is actually a group of places — “sites imperiled by state actions,” i.e. cuts for preservation funding. But four out of eleven […]

Suburbs once seemed like a good idea to politicians and the people that moved there, but the downsides to suburban sprawl became clear in a few generations: long commutes and the pollution that goes with them, loss of farmland and forests, increasingly large houses with increasingly large carbon footprints. But will the refocus on transit-oriented, […]

I feel a little bad for Mike Pool, the deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management. He’s [a career BLM employee](http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/info/newsroom/2009/february/SO0903_Pool_acting_director.html) who worked his way up through the agency. And this month he’s doing his duty by dealing with the House Natural Resources Committee and its push to open up as much federal land […]

[Back in September](http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/we-need-your-ideas-a-call-for-direct-action-in-the-climate-movement), the writer and climate activist Bill McKibben joined with other leaders in the environmental community in a call for ideas on direct actions the climate movement could take to jostle Americans into caring about climate change. Now [he’s inviting like-minded people](http://www.tarsandsaction.org/invitation/) to come to Washington in mid-August for a protest against the […]

In the new issue of *Rolling Stone*, Al Gore [writes at length](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/climate-of-denial-20110622?page=1) about climate change, climate change deniers, and the media’s role in affirming them. I think it’s time for Al Gore to be quiet about climate change. In his article, he comes off as accusatory and ranty. He goes after the media for being […]

I never thought of hiking and biking and swimming and picnicking, the activities that draw me to mountains and lakes and forests, as a privileged category of outdoor recreation. But to off-highway vehicle enthusiasts, the federal government is unfairly supportive of my type of “non-motorized recreation,” while it restricts access to or closes the motorized […]

Farmland in America, particularly in the Northeast, has been disappearing for decades, ceding to suburban and industrial development, track homes, malls and McMansions. States and nonprofits have pushed back against these pressures by using tools like conservation easements, which separate development rights from the land. Some states, like New Jersey, have spent more than $1 […]