Year: 2012

The vegetables anyone can grow: Edible weeds

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Weeds not only flaunt human control, their very definition is a tricky thing to pin down. The standard definition goes along the lines of ‘a plant growing where it is not wanted’. The concept of a weed is a subjective one, more of a mental category than a botanical one. The plants we call weeds come from all corners of the plant kingdom. It is remarkable then that so many of these plants which we curse, spray and hoe turn out to be not only edible, but often more nutritious than the cultivated crops they grow next to.

Burning Picassos for heat: Why we need to electrify transportation

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An oil executive once observed that burning oil for energy is like burning Picassos for heat. Oil is extraordinarily valuable as the basis for so many products we use every day that the thought of simply burning it ought to be unthinkable. And yet, because oil remains the most cost-effective and widely available source of liquid fuels, we are hooked on it for transportation with little prospect of substitutes on the scale we would require–unless we consider electricity.