Category Archives: Eric Freedman

Eric Freedman is the director of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism

Green versus green and energy dilemmas

Eric Freedman

About twice a year I drive roundtrip between Michigan and Colorado, about 1,200 miles each way. Each time I marvel at the array of wind turbines – hundreds of them – on the high ridges along both sides of Interstate 80 in western Iowa. This in a state with mega-acres of corn grown to make ethanol.
In fact, Iowa ranked first in the nation in ethanol production last year, with Michigan in 11^th place. And it gets the highest percentage of its electricity – about 25% — from wind, contrasted with Michigan’s 1%, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration figures for 2012.
Closer to home, I drove by Michigan’s largest wind turbine array in Gratiot County on my way from Lansing to Midland last fall.
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World Press Freedom Day in a “not free” place

Askat Dukenbaev announces the Freedom House “Freedom of the Press” results for Kyrgyzstan at a press conference. Image: Eric Freedman

By Eric Freedman
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan – May 1 was World Press Freedom Day, an event marked – but not celebrated – by release of Freedom House’s annual country-by-country assessment of the state of press rights across the globe.
Clearly 2013 wasn’t a stellar year. As Karin Karlekar, the Freedom House project director, said in releasing the 2014 report, “We see declines in media freedom on a global level, driven by governments’ efforts to control the message and punish the messenger.”
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Preserving the lands of the wealthy

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Springwood. Image: National Park Service

By Eric Freedman
A stretch of New York’s Hudson Valley is known for its old wealth, stately mansions—and encroaching new wealth and development. Here, in and near Hyde Park, the names Vanderbilt and Roosevelt resonate with the grandeur of history and opulence, with old money that once was new.
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Tomato seeds, environmental justice and globalization

Guntra Aistara. Image: Central European University

By Eric Freedman
We often refer to the importance of planting seeds – the seed of an idea, the small acorn that births the giant oak. But can seeds, real seeds, germinate into a revolution?
That’s what happened in a grassroots – or tomato roots – uprising in Latvia, a West Virginia-sized former Soviet republic laying between the Baltic Sea to the west and Russia to the east.
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