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Chernobyl, 25 years later

Today is the 25th anniversary of the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Here's part one of a spooky-as-hell film showing scientists venturing inside the plant's cement sarcophagus, which keeps its nuclear material contained (for now). A few other things to look at today: What's the ecology of Chernobyl today? Some wildlife has returned, but […]

Ezra Klein: ‘Obama, based on his positions, is a moderate Republican of the early 1990s’

Klein writes, “as Democrats moved to the right to pick up Republican votes, Republicans moved to the right to oppose Democratic proposals.”Photo: The White HouseThe Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein has a terrific column that places the failed climate bill into the political context that has been missing from so much of the recent debate: If you put […]

Boehner supports cutting oil subsidies for five whole minutes

Apparently the whole "we support handing out bags full of money to the rich because we care about the little guy" act is harder to keep up than we'd realized. Put John Boehner under a little pressure about oil company subsidies and he buckles like a belt. ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl got the speaker […]

Court strikes down federal overreach on transmission lines

With the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congress gave broad powers to the Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to identify “congested” transmission corridors.  The goal was to prioritize new high-voltage transmission development and to provide higher financial returns to transmission development companies.  The decision created a lot of controversy, […]

Desperate sprawl developer gives away cars with houses

Desperate measures.My head nearly exploded at the breakfast table on Saturday morning. I was reading a piece in The New York Times about an Illinois developer who has finally found a way to unload the new houses he has built some 50 miles from downtown Chicago, in a place he has seen fit to dub […]

API shocker: Oil makes money!

In a transparent attempt to blunt impending justified rage over this week's profit reports from Big Oil, the latest piece of spin to emerge from the well-paid creative minds at the American Petroleum Institute is a real classic. The gist, in a nutshell, is that oil makes money -- a lot of money.

Unsure about nuclear power? Here are the five questions you must answer to decide

Chernobyl begs a lot of questions 25 years later.Photo: Pedro Moura PinheiroCross-posted from The Guardian. Containing the elemental forces that rage inside a nuclear reactor is one of the great achievements of science, but losing control, as happened 25 years ago today at Chernobyl, is one of its greatest failures. So what to think of nuclear […]

Open letter to a conservative climate change convert

Mr. Tucker, Your story about transitioning from climate skepticism to climate realism has gotten quite a bit of attention and interest among folks on “my side” of that debate, as you can imagine. I had wondered if it were still possible for people to be “defeated by facts” and change their minds about issues tangled […]

A star Silicon Valley investor puts his money where his mouth is for sustainable ag

Ali Partovi: Investing green in green ag.As antidote to those who argue that the future of food is all about technologies like genetic engineering and new pesticides, I refer you to entrepreneur Ali Partovi (full disclosure: Ali and I are acquaintances) who has an Earth Day post over at Silicon Valley’s Techcrunch, one of the […]

Me, in NYT’s Room for Debate, on the Endangered Species Act

Photo: Reed LakefieldLast week, Todd Woody wrote a great piece in The New York Times about the growing crisis around the Endangered Species Act, as the Fish and Wildlife Service is overwhelmed with new applications for species in danger. NYT’s Room for Debate asked me and some other folks to weigh in on the piece. […]