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Grim

Before it gets too old: The San Francisco Chronicle ran an extraordinary piece over the weekend. It’s a long, detailed, science-based worst-case scenario of what California’s water situation could look like in coming decades. This stuff works so much better than dry facts. Tell a story. People like stories. Kudos to author Glen Martin.

Lines that are bright, how we love them

Bill McKibben’s Step It Up 2007 campaign (read his dispatches) is trying to rally a bunch of simultaneous protests pushing a single goal: reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 80% by 2050. This approach — picking a goal rather than supporting specific legislation — is known as bright lining, and it’s something you’re going to hear a […]

Happy happy!

The title of this post comes from a specific email request. Yes, I take requests! All right, here’s some non-suicide-inducing news: Mayor Bloomberg in NYC is handing over a big swath of (run down, condemned) city-owned land to a development firm that’s going to create a model green low-income community. (The firm won a design […]

How’s things up in Canada, eh?

From the fascinating world of Canadian politics: Stéphane Dion gave his first major policy speech as Liberal leader yesterday. How'd it go?

NOAA satellites are degrading

Reuters reported on Monday that without adequate funding for maintenance, we can expect NOAA-run observation satellites to be dropping like flies from orbit -- 58% of them by 2010, and pretty much the rest save five scrappy ones by 2020. And although the high-tech Ragnarok was foretold as far ago as last March, still no mission "go / no go" from the White House on what do about it.

Perhaps their rationale for decision-stalling is related to their lunar base idea -- just put a huge magnifying lens on the moon and we can see the changing earth better than ever! Just watch out for that sun glare though. We wouldn't want to burn something.

Gross

If The Mustache’s uncritical embrace of "clean coal" made you want to puke, I advise you avoid at all costs the letter to the editor sent in response by James Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. You can’t resist? OK, here it is, in full: Thomas L. Friedman ("My Favorite Green […]

School board official defends the decision

Remember the story about how the Federal Way school board put a "moratorium" on showings of An Inconvenient Truth? David Larsen, the now-extremely-embattled vice president of the Federal Way school board, has a piece in the Seattle Times today, explaining what the school board really did and why they did it. First, I should say […]

Bush knocks down rumors of climate shift

Lest there remain any hope smoldering in wannabe-centrist hearts about Bush’s change of course on global warming, White House press flack Tony Snow put it decisively to rest yesterday, saying: "I want to walk you back from the whole carbon cap story … The carbon cap stuff is not accurate. It’s wrong." And again: "If […]

Embrace Me, You Irreplaceable You

Unions, conservationists join forces to protect sporting rights Need more proof that green is gaining steam? Voila: a brand-new partnership between a Republican-leaning conservation group and 20 labor unions that represent nearly 5 million people. Worried that hunters and anglers are being barred from prime playgrounds, the Union Sportsmen’s Alliance will push for increased federal […]

That Doesn’t Even Make Fence

Border fence construction may bypass environmental laws It’s hard to think of a worse idea than building a 700-mile border fence between the U.S. and Mexico, but here’s a shot: building a border fence without abiding by the Endangered Species Act, Federal Water Pollution Control Act, or National Environmental Policy Act. Yet on Monday, Homeland […]