Business Week's September 14 issue reports: Second-Class Solar Panels? Sun-soaked New Orleans should be a great place for solar power. Yet according to TÜV Rheinland PTL, a testing lab, up to 30 percent of photovoltaic panels installed in such steamy areas of the U.S. are likely to fail in less time than the 25 years manufacturers typically specify in their warranties. Homeowners will be covered, of course, but it will still be a hassle. Even in hot, dry areas failure rates could hit 12 percent. The same producers' panels probably won't fail as quickly in Europe, where vendors agreed to …

As a new administration took over in Washington in the midst of a massive economic decline, the media kept asking members of the new energy and environment team if the U.S. could "afford" their agenda in light of the economic condition of the nation. (Witness the Washington Post interview with Carol Browner.) The New York Times reported on Jan. 18: Given a choice between stimulating the economy and protecting the environment, 58 percent of Americans said it was more important to stimulate the economy, compared with 33 percent who chose protecting the environment. In April 2007, 36 percent said it …

Those of you who did not make it to New York on Jan. 29-30 for the 20th anniversary celebration of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a national conference on Advancing Climate Justice: Transforming the Economy, Public Health and Our Environment, missed an inspirational high. You also missed a political milestone. The event marked the first public speech by new EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who laid out the nation's new environmental-justice and climate-change priorities. President Obama echoed Jackson's sentiments and made a statement to the Muslim world by giving his first TV interview to Al Arabiya television. Civilized, reasoned discussion and …

Sunday night The New York Times published, "Obama to Let States Restrict Emissions Standards." First reaction of those concerned only with a so-called economic recovery: "this will kill what's left of the U.S. car industry!" Wrong! This is exactly what the domestic car industry needs. No "car czar" or other federal regulator would be able to push as hard to get more fuel-efficient and lower-emissions vehicles produced in the U.S. faster than regulation-constrained market demand. That $17 billion provided as emergency support to GM and Chrysler had no real strings on fuel efficiency and emissions attached. Anyone who thinks the …

The long green? That's money -- and you all know what "going green" is about ... Everyone keeps asking the members of President Barack Obama's energy and environment team if the U.S. can "afford" their agenda in light of the economic condition of the nation. (Witness the Washington Post interview with Carol Browner as one example.) Silly question ... and they get simplistic answers, such as "we will." It's a silly question because it assumes a conflict that isn't there, as do the typical mainstream surveys of public opinion. The New York Times reports on Jan. 18: Given a choice …

Those coal ash spills should have been expected. Normal Accidents is a 25-year-old book by Charles Perrow, subtitled "Living with High-Risk Technologies." Perrow, reflecting on the Three Mile Island nuclear incident and other accidents, argued that modern advanced technologies are so complex, and require such careful monitoring and management, that accidents, including potentially massive system failures, have to be considered "normal," not exceptional, events. The technologies he wrote about included many we consider commonplace today, but climate change and other global environmental impact risks were not among the "accidents" he anticipated. Economists seem to have learned precious little from the …

Whether it's Pacific Northwest flooding or the other "strange" weather phenomena we've been seeing in the U.S. and across the globe, the present-day risks of a changing climate are real and threatening -- to say nothing about the future risks. But the current economic downturn often drowns out calls for major spending to lower emissions or otherwise address climate change. Still, the reality is that the two -- economic and environmental revitalization -- can and should go hand in hand. A great introduction to why is available from Frank Ackerman in Dollars & Sense magazine. "Climate Economics in Four Easy …

If I buy bread from you, when you want to sell it to me, and we agree on a price, that's a deal between the two of us. Now imagine that you getting up early to bake bread wakes two people who would rather sleep in. They are not a factor in our deal -- they are "external" to our market exchange and any effect on them is an "externality" we have ignored in agreeing on our price. The same logic holds for the greenhouse gases your ovens generated when you baked the bread. That contribution to climate change is …

A belated Merry Christmas, everyone! Yes, it's possible that most of Grist's readers are not Christian (I'm not, for one). But December 25 is the day celebrated as Christmas by much of the world; it's a declared holiday in many countries and cultures, whether or not we buy into its religious significance. It is, therefore, Christmas Day in reality, even among peoples of the earth who have never so much as heard of Christianity. Christmas, in other words, is an Institutional Reality. There's nothing scientific about it -- in ecological or cosmological terms, it's just another revolution of the planet. …

I keep asking myself these questions -- and I hold a PhD that says I should know the answers! When public policy is guided by economic analysis, the environment is under threat, and the economy is in a hole, not knowing the answer to these questions creates a big problem. Unfortunately there is no one "economics," not in the sense that there is a mathematics (2+2 does = 4, and does not = 5), or physics, or biology, or ... Two examples of the weakness of economic analysis have hit me over the head recently. One is a matter of …