On May 2, Mary Gade, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Region 5 administrator, was forced out.

Photo:HRC, Creative Commons, Flickr The Ghawar Oil Field, located in Saudi Arabia, is the world’s largest known oil field at approximately 170 billion barrels. Arctic Ocean reserves may be more than twice as large.

In December of 2006, several workers at Quality Pork Processors (QPP) in Austin, Minnesota, came down with a mysterious illness.

I hate to rain on everyone’s curb-global-warming parade, as it’s both a critical and largely unresolved issue.

Aspartame, sold as NutraSweet, Equal, NatraTaste and Canderel, was discovered in 1965 by G.D. Searle Co., and originally used to treat ulcers.

As early as 1975, experts were promising us that the personal-computer, or PC revolution, would create a paperless society.

In 2008, Fair Isaac Corp. (FIC – $24.25), creator of the FICO or credit-scoring process, will roll out two new product lines designed to disadvantage American consumers.

Photo:Katie@!, Creative Commons, Flickr On January 28, Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN – $14.22) announced that it would raise poultry prices substantially as a result of higher feed costs.

If you search the Internet for EI DuPont de Nemours & Co. (DD – $44.77), or simply DuPont, you’ll come across a stand-alone web page called Preserving Open Land: 1983. The page portrays DuPont as a paradigm for the chemical industry and details a supposed history of environmental stewardship which is in direct contraposition to…

Briggs & Stratton (BGG – $19.26), a small-engine manufacturer with corporate offices in Wisconsin, major manufacturing plants in six states, and offshore manufacturing in China, Dubai and the Czech Republic, has failed to mow down environmentalists or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whose draft regulation of small-engine emissions standards will become rule this year.

In 2000, Ford Motor Company (F – $5.92) sponsored Time Magazine‘s Earth Day edition, Heroes for the Planet, and issued a statement declaring that it would henceforth spend as much on its environmental image as it would promoting a new model car. Ford also promised to reduce emissions.

The U.S. Congress recently passed an energy bill that requires incrementally phasing out incandescent bulbs over the next six years, beginning with 100-watt bulbs in 2012 and ending with 40-watt bulbs in 2014.

Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, or 3M (MMM – $78.50), is a Minnesota institution on the order of Milwaukee and beer. Founded in 1902 by a lawyer, a butcher and a locomotive engineer, the company set out to make sandpaper and, 23 years later, came up with a packaging revolution known as masking tape. Along the…

Dan Porter is the first to admit that, looking back on it, 2000 was something less than an ideal year for launching an Internet outfit. The dot-com frenzy had peaked, the NASDAQ was beginning its freefall, and a raft of ill-conceived e-concerns were burning through the last of their venture capital. In other words, it…

Socially responsible investing is not new. But how about the concept of politically responsible investing? The Blue Fund , which launched Oct. 17, 2006, is the first SRI index mutual fund to add an overtly political component. Included companies and executive officers not only express progressive ideals, but they also make corporate and personal contributions…

I first heard about Ideal Bite , an online eco-minded website, while apartment hunting last summer.  When Heather Stephenson , the company's co-founder and tenant of one of the apartments on my list, handed me her card and explained the environmentally-conscious business behind the green apple logo, I'm sure I stiffened.  I recall wondering if…