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Demand in the Roughy

Deep-sea trawling puts ecosystems in deep trouble, says U.N. report Deep-sea trawling is bad. How bad? Uh, pretty bad. Turns out raking gigantic fishing nets across the ocean floor shatters millennia-old coral, raises smothering clouds of sediment, and destroys underwater mountains. “It’s the equivalent of clearing old-growth forest to collect squirrels,” says researcher Alex Rogers, […]

You Are What You Eat

Fast Food Nation movie opens, and we talk with author Eric Schlosser There was a time when Eric Schlosser took his kids out for fast food. But once he started researching an article on the industry, all that changed. The article turned into a widely acclaimed book, Fast Food Nation, which has now been turned […]

Franklin, My Dear, I Do Give a Damn

Pennsylvania plan would cut mercury emissions 90 percent in nine years If a plan approved by a state board yesterday makes it through 14 days of withering stares from the legislature, Pennsylvania will join the cadre of states enacting tougher environmental rules than the feds. The controversial plan, which aims to cut mercury emissions 90 […]

It’s an important addition to the REC debate

Building Green, publisher of Environmental Buildings News and GreenSpec, just released their top 10 green building products for 2006, and Community Energy's Renewable Energy Credits made the list. Although not directly related to the "kerfuffle" about the Whole Foods/Renewable Choice Card, this is important to the REC debate for a couple of reasons.

1. EBN is one of the most respected sources of information on green building, and they feel RECs are worthwhile. To me this is a huge vote of confidence in RECs as part of overall environmental sustainability efforts.
2. RECs are not strictly a building product, but a service choice, yet purchasing RECs can make a huge dent in a building's lifecycle impact. Typically, RECs receive relatively little attention, because they are not as sexy as other options such as solar panels or salvaged-timber bathroom partitions. Adding RECs to a list of important green products broadens people's perspectives on what green building can be. For example, this highlights that you don't have to build a new building or undergo a major renovation to green your buildings, but you can start right away with RECs.

No, really

Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) recently released a report called Why the "Peak Oil" Theory Falls Down -- Myths, Legends and the Future of Oil Resources. It's getting a lot of attention, and has produced much consternation in the peakoilosphere.

The definitive response, as usual, is on The Oil Drum.

I must say, the more I read about peak oil, the less complicated the whole thing seems to me. That may sound crazy, since everyone involved in discussions of oil prides themselves on their engineering acumen, impeccable logic, and devotion to empirical data (in the form of charts and graphs, of course!). Pull any one thread of the oil tapestry and you quickly uncover a skein of irreconcilably opposed viewpoints, all backed by reams of data, all contemptuous of the illogic and wishful thinking of the others.

So why do I think it's simple?

Enviro group settles on campaign finance violation

The Sierra Club has agreed to pay a $28,000 fine to settle charges that the organization violated Federal Election Commission regulations during the 2004 election.

The FEC found that the club's 2004 election brochure contained "express advocacy" which constituted an "independent expenditure" -- making it off-limits for the nonprofit Sierra Club.

Cellulosic ethanol, that is

Ha. This headline from Greenwire yesterday (sub. rqd) verges on parody:

Cellulosic fuel on cusp of commercialization, but hurdles remain, experts say

How to transform personal transportation with existing tools

Previous posts about CyberTran described next-generation mass transit systems.

But nobody expects automobiles to disappear from U.S. roads in the near future. We need to get efficiency way up, fast.

The automobile equivalent of CyberTran is the ultra-light electric car. Electric cars don't have to be dull; Tesla Motors sells the Tesla roadster, a ~$100,000 electric sports car that can outrun a comparable Ferrari costing almost twice the price.

But they also don't have to be toys for the filthy rich. Solectria demonstrated the midsize four-passenger Sunrise in 1997. It traveled 216 miles from Boston to New York at normal highway speed, using only 85% of the power in a battery containing energy equivalent to less than a gallon of gas (PDF). Solectria claimed at the time it could profitably retail the car for as little as $20,000. So why did it never come to market?

The problem with a mass market car is you have to make in mass quantities. Generally, if you cannot use the full capacity of a major factory by selling at least 40,000+ units per year, a car is considered a niche product. Below that, you cannot get the full economies of automobile mass production.

Inhofe on the U.N. climate summit

The last gasps of a dying chairmanship: Inhofe weighs in on the U.N. climate summit.

His biggest concern regarding the summit -- which, by the way, he didn't attend -- was a children's book (PDF) on climate change, which Inhofe claims is "brainwashing little kids."

Pits of Despair

Coal industry fends off concerns, keeps working on comeback Some of the tap water in West Virginia’s Mingo County is flowing in funny colors: red, brown, and black. Alarmed residents asked the state if the discoloration, caused by high levels of heavy metals including arsenic and lead, could be related to Big Coal’s practice of […]