Portugal gives wind power a big bear hug; England gives it the finger Portugal is already building the world's largest solar power plant; now, to make us feel even worse about ourselves, it's planning a huge new project to more than double its wind-energy capacity. A contractor bid will be accepted by this summer for the project, which will provide enough energy to power 750,000 homes, and is expected to create 1,600 jobs. But what's some good news without a little bad news? Plans to create the largest wind farm in England, able to power 45,000 homes, have been rejected …

On a misty November morning in 2005, I was photographing in New Orleans' Ninth Ward neighborhood a few blocks from where one of the levees had failed 10 weeks earlier. Squatting in a driveway in foul-smelling mud, adjusting the knobs on my camera, I stood up to stretch my back and noticed a man sitting on some concrete steps a few houses away. He was the only other person I had seen for several hours; the otherwise empty streets were as still and silent as those of a ghost town. I felt I ought to acknowledge him before returning under …

Warmer B.C. ravaged by beetles, haunted by dead birds The flora and fauna of British Columbia, Canada, are having a rough go of global warming. B.C. forests are suffering through a massive insect infestation that's ravaging an area three times the size of Maryland. The mountain pine beetle can't survive severe cold, but milder winters (hmm, what the heck could be causing milder winters?) have contributed to its rapid propagation, and Canada's successful fights against wildfires have allowed the growth of a beetle buffet of lodgepole pines. To date, 411 million cubic feet worth of trees have died, twice the …

Climate change a major security problem, says U.K. defense chief U.K. Defense Secretary John Reid has echoed a growing number of analysts by stressing that global warming is not just a weather problem, or a health problem, or a problem for biodiversity. It's a global security problem. In a Monday speech, Reid called on the nation's military to prepare now for strife brought on by desertification, water shortages, melting ice fields, and increased population. "The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur," …

Shady synfuel industry making billions off tax-credit loophole A budget bill currently being hashed out in Congress may help a few dozen coal plants continue to get filthy rich off of taxpayer money. The backstory: In 1980, Congress enacted tax incentives for turning coal into synthetic fuel, requiring only that the coal be chemically altered -- not necessarily cleaner. The subsidy was designed to be phased out if oil rose above a certain price, the thought being that synfuel demand would increase if oil became too expensive, making subsidization unnecessary. You may have noticed oil prices nudging up lately, but …

New Yorkers sue Big Oil over decades-old underground contamination The words "oil spill" tend to summon images of remote coastlines and goo-covered wildlife. But one of the nastiest spills going is in Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Greenpoint neighborhood: a 17-million-gallon underground oil slick (bigger than the Exxon Valdez disaster) that has spread over an area as big as 41 football fields. A legacy of decades-gone oil refineries, the spill was discovered in 1978 and about half has been cleaned out since 1990. But when New York's Department of Environmental Conservation last year suggested it would take another two decades to mop up …

Americans would support gas tax in service of green goals, poll finds Most Americans would support a higher federal gasoline tax if the proceeds went toward ending dependence on foreign oil, reducing global warming, or cutting energy consumption, a new nationwide telephone poll shows. Some 85 percent of adults polled opposed an increased gas tax with no qualifications. But when the funds were to be earmarked for energy-independence and environmental goals, support rose to 55 percent or more. Follow-up interviews affirmed that support. "If it was a tax that would sponsor research for fuel cells or alternative fuel sources, I …

Nigerian court orders Shell to pay $1.5 billion for pollution A Nigerian court has ordered Royal Dutch Shell to ante up $1.5 billion in damages to communities in the Niger Delta, citing oil spills that polluted regional rivers, spoiled crops, and poisoned fish. The Friday ruling is a major victory for the region's Ijaw people, who have struggled for over a decade to get compensation for environmental damages. Shell says it will appeal. The court ruling comes during an upsurge in violence in the Niger Delta, where local communities live in squalor despite the region's oil riches. The militant Movement …

It's as befuddling to see the "Live Green, Go Yellow" slogan splashed across the General Motors ads running throughout the Olympics as it was to hear the term "switchgrass" uttered by President Bush in his State of the Union speech last month. Here we have GM and Dubya, two of the world's most entrenched and heavy-hitting advocates of fossil-fuel consumption, suddenly trumpeting homegrown biofuels as the up-and-coming alternative to oil. GM's new eco-rallying cry. Greenwashing, you wonder? On some level, of course. But there's more to it. GM's new high-budget campaign, which promotes the use of ethanol (hence the "yellow"), …

Related to the soon-to-be-revised index-card manifesto, I have a question, raised by some of the feedback I got: My assumption is that sooner or later all personal vehicles -- and eventually all vehicles, period -- will be powered solely with electricity from renewable sources: wind, solar, hydrokinetic, biothermal. Here's my basic reasoning: Humanity's energy reserves (fossil fuels) are finite. We need to start living within the earth's solar budget. Consider the following three alternatives (and pardon my utter lack of technical sophistication): Biotic material absorbs energy from the soil and the sun, dies, sinks into the soil, and comes under …