There's a lot of talk about genetically modified foods, but we’ve been eating them for years.  The history of agriculture is based in selective breeding for "better" plants and animals -- corn, apples, bananas, cows; many of the plants and animals we eat have been carefully selected over hundreds and thousands of years to be bigger, sweeter or juicer. Today, genetic alteration can be done in the lab over much shorter timescales. As opposed to the (relatively) slow process of breeding similar organisms, biotechnicians can insert the gene of one organism into the gene of another -- including an…

People are talking about Fracking.  The country’s largest fracking site, a 350 million-year-old formation called the Marcellus Shale, spans the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland. So what is fracking?  And why should you care? Hydraulic fracturing has been around for decades. Oklahoma-based Natural Gas  producer Chesapeake Energy explains that “Hydraulic fracturing is a proven technological advancement which allows producers to safely recover natural gas and oil from deep shale formations.” On the other hand, The Environmental Working Group (EWG) explains that …

Last month in this column we talked a little bit about winterizing your home.  Experts recommend doing many things to prepare for the winter, including installing energy-efficient doors and windows, maintaining your furnace, adding insulation, and more.  But sometimes it can be difficult to know where to start. Here's a tip: BGE offers lots of useful information on its website.  And the company also offer customers the option to save on their energy costs and lessen their carbon footprint through participation in one or more of the BGE Smart Energy Savers Programs, which were established in …

Last month Governor Martin O’Malley and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar together noted that the federal government announced that wind energy projects off the Mid-Atlantic coast would cause “no significant environmental damage.”  According to The Washington Post this finding removes “one of several expected regulatory hurdles to wind farm construction sought by O’Malley and governors in other East Coast states.”O’Malley explained that the development would aid efforts in Maryland and elsewhere to make offshore wind a reality.This is a big deal for a number of reasons.  Currently, more …

I have a friend who posted on Facebook a picture of a chicken foot allegedly found in some take-out Chinese food in a far-flung area of the country.  Shenoted, “This is why I only eat organic!” First of all, chicken feet are a common snack in China.  Secondly, how didshe know it wasn’t an organic chicken? Her whole attitude bothered me. So many of people see the term “organic” and assume it means better, when in reality that is often not simply the case.  Sometimes buying locally produced food can be a more important decision for your family, your community and the environment. Most of us …

Drafts are blowing through my 38-year-old house. In the family room in particular, it’s icy cold on the (carpeted) floor where my kids play and I’m bundled in my Snuggie on the couch. So far it’s been a fairly mild winter, but those windy days seem to seep through every crack and crevice of the doors and windows and down through the chimney. My back door is the worst offender: if you press your eye to the place where the door meets the wall you can see the backyard.  That isn’t right. So, we’ve begun to take steps to make our home more energy efficient and warmer, and to hopefully reduce our …