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California is now really, truly, officially screwed by drought
Gov. Jerry Brown finally declared an emergency, in the midst of the worst drought in California's history.
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This LED billboard is the only way to see the sunrise in smoggy Beijing
The photo looks like something out of Blade Runner.
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Recovery from WV Coal Chemical Spill Continues – What Next?
As a West Virginian, this has been a sad, frustrating, and infuriating time for me, though I do not live in the area affected by last week’s coal chemical spill. More than 300,000 people in the WV capital of Charleston and downstream counties have been without water for eight days and counting. The chemical that […]
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Who Owns West Virginia’s Water? A Cautionary Tale
It took a few days after a state of emergency was declared across nine West Virginia counties and one-sixth of the state’s population was told not to drink or bathe using their tap water for the national news media to discover there is a story of national importance occurring in the political backwaters of Appalachia. […]
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Dumb cuts and dumber riders: The green take on the new federal budget
The bill is only marginally better on environmental spending than the sequester, and it includes riders that undermine environmental regulation.
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Zombie carbon trading’s latest resurrection
[Because the following is long, it is also available in pdf format at http://www.nohairshirts.com/zomb.pdf ] Even as London carbon trading desks shut down[1] in response to the crumbling European Trading System (ETS) , the zombie concept of carbon trading spreads to China. Because Robin Hahnel’s carbon trading defenses[2] offer the best pro-carbon market arguments to […]
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Don’t be smug: Your suburban neighbors cancel out your green urban lifestyle
Sure, living car-free in the city is the climate-friendly thing to do. But new research shows that the greenest urban cores are surrounded by the most heavily polluting 'burbs.
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Light rail on a diet equals better mass transit
I often write about the key role the federal government plays in infrastructure. Ultralight rail is one small example of the role national governments can play in advancing or bottlenecking infrastructure change. The state of today’s light rail: when extensively used it saves energy compared to cars. Another advantage: light rail has lower capital costs. […]
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President Obama’s Chemical Safety Panel Must Heed Senator Obama’s Warnings
In the wake of the April 2103 West, Texas, chemical plant explosion, which killed 15 people and injured 160 more, President Obama issued an executive order directing federal agencies to improve the safety of our industrial chemical plants. Right now, a working group of federal officials is conducting “listening sessions” around the country to hear […]
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Peak Water and Food Scarcity
At the international level, water conflicts among countries dominate the headlines. But within countries it is the competition for water between cities and farms that preoccupies political leaders. Neither economics nor politics favors farmers. They almost always lose out to cities. Indeed, in many countries farmers now face not only a shrinking water supply but […]