Alternative Energies
Bigwigs have big ideas for cutting our food waste in half

People are spectacularly good at throwing things away — recyclables, dreams, reputations (lookin’ at you, Ben Carson) all come to mind. And then there’s the mother of all landfill fillers: food. Up to 40 percent of food in the U.S., for example, is wasted. But Thursday sounded a new rallying cry: Two initiatives — both announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — aim to target humanity’s tendency to throw away the stuff that keeps us alive. The first, dubbed Champions 12.3, is run by a patchwork coalition of 30 heavy-hitters from the likes of Nestlé, WWF, Unilever, and the African Union. The coalition, which aims to cut global food waste in half and reduce food loss by 2030, is named after U.N. Sustainable…

Angry moms get gun-toters booted from Whole Foods

Welcome to America: Home of the free, land of the gun nut. “Open carry” has been in the news this month as Texas implemented a law allowing people to openly carry guns in public as though this were, I don’t know … Syria or 1860. Lest you think this is just Texas being Texas, it’s not: Texas is the 45th state to pass an open carry law, and in the vast majority of those states, you don’t even need a permit. (Incidentally, the NRA spent nearly $300 million in 2013, according to its most recent published tax information. No word on how many lawmakers that bought.) Not everyone is thrilled to see their fellow citizens toting firearms to the mall or the movie theatre…