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The Big Greasy

New Orleans floodwaters a stew of sewage and toxic chemicals Toxic chemicals contaminating the New Orleans floodwaters may be less of a short-term health hazard than plain ol’ poop. Federal officials have declared a public health emergency for the Gulf Coast, fearing that viruses and bacteria from sewage in the floodwaters could cause a major […]

The Coastest With the Leastest

Coastal-ecology degradation contributed to Katrina’s destructive force Far from being solely a “natural” disaster, Hurricane Katrina’s impact was compounded by human alterations of the Gulf Coast ecology. Complex levee and canal systems built to protect New Orleans from being flooded by the Mississippi River, and to improve the river as a shipping channel, have also […]

Loading the hurricane dice

The smart gang at RealClimate has made an excellent contribution to the Katrina-and-global-warming discussion.

Gristniks hit the pages of the Globe

It looks like modesty has prevailed in the Grist offices again, as there hasn't been a peep about the op-ed in today's Boston Globe, entitled "A fit of (oil) peak," co-authored by Dave Roberts and Chip Giller.

It's also the first hit on Google News for "peak oil."

On framing environmentalism

This is part three of a three-part interview. You can read part one here and part two here.

In this section, Alex and I discuss the way environmentalism has been framed and what greens can do to change those frames.

Katrina and oil

Some folks might look at the economic reverberations of Hurricane Katrina, which has done untold damage to our oil infrastructure, and think, "hm, maybe depending so heavily on a single source of fuel concentrated in a few small areas puts us unwisely at risk."

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tx.) isn't one of those people:

Barton said the hurricane aftermath should be a "wakeup call" to the American people and government to increase domestic oil production from areas like the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge and the coast of California and to build new refineries.

Ape Fear

New plan aims to save endangered great apes of Africa Conservationists are angling to raise $30 million to stop gorillas and chimpanzees from going extinct in the wild within a human generation. The U.N. Environment Program’s just-released “World Atlas of Great Apes and Their Conservation” reveals a poor prognosis for the survival of gorilla and […]

Good reads

Billmon on the environmental madness revealed by Katrina.

Also Ari Kelman on New Orleans' grim environmental history.

Gays destroy New Orleans

Saying that global warming "caused" Hurricane Katrina is pretty stupid.

No, clearly what caused Katrina is God's anger at homosexuals. Thanks a lot, gays!

(via Think Progress)

CAFE standards and gas taxes are not the only choices

My own take on CAFE standards is roughly Kevin Drum's: There's no need to think of CAFE standards and gas taxes as an either/or choice. And you can probably get more done with both than with either alone.

In fact, there's reason to believe that gas taxes wouldn't raise efficiency as effectively as CAFE standards. Consumers typically undervalue the benefits of fuel efficiency -- they only take a few years worth of gas savings into account when buying a car, even if they plan on holding onto the car for much longer. That's not necessarily rational, but it's apparently human (or at least American) nature. And it means that fuel taxes probably would need to be really steep to get the same result as CAFE standards.

Now, as long as we're dreaming about conservation policy, there are two ideas that get much less attention than either gas taxes or CAFE standards, but that could be far more effective than either.