Portside

Castro's biggest test was in the 1990s, when the sudden end of subsidized trade with the Eastern Bloc, combined with sanctions from the United States, led to a severe economic crisis. His response - which history may judge as his greatest legacy - was to launch an ambitious program in organic agriculture, environmental planning, renewable energy and other sustainable development practices.

We are skilled at assuming things cannot change and that we, the people, do not have the power to change them. Yet our country and our world have always been changing, are in the midst of great and terrible changes, and are occasionally changed through the power of the popular will and idealistic movements. The changing climate now demands that we summon up the energy to leave behind the Age of Fossil Fuel (and maybe some portion of the Age of Capitalism as well).

Nuns, landowners and environmentalists take on the union-backed Bluegrass Pipeline.

Court injunction brought in by oil and gas company makes even supermarkets off-limits for Vera Scroggins.

In These Times discussed the fracking dilemma with Kristin Lynch, Pacific region director of Food & Water Watch; Josh Mogerman, deputy director of national media at the NRDC; and Sean Sweeney, director of the Cornell Global Labor Institute.