Latest Articles

What’s the matter with elasticities? (Answer: maybe nothing)

Price-elasticities — dimensionless parameters that express the extent to which a price increase triggers a usage decrease — are central to policies that aim to reduce a harmful activity by internalizing its damage into its price. The efficacy of carbon fees, congestion tolls, cigarette taxes, and the like turns on the proposition that the toll […]

Awesome video shows us what the messaging on climate and clean energy must become

Holy hickory-smoked pole beans, did you just see that? That's what happens when the messaging on climate shifts from scare tactics — which studies show only work on about 10 percent of the population — to a totally honest, positive but not Pollyanna-ish attempt to get people excited about real change. Carbon Nation is the […]

What would a Chernobyl or Fukushima disaster at Indian Point mean?

Twenty-five years ago, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, sending plumes of radiation around the planet and devastating the area surrounding the plant to this day. The world learned firsthand then about the dangers of nuclear power. Today, the ongoing nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is a tragic reminder of the threat that […]

Home tweet home: Twitter chooses the city over sprawl

I spent the last couple of days at a conference about climate, cities, and behavior. One topic that kept coming up among the municipal officials there — from places like New York, Denver, Vancouver, Richmond, and San Francisco — was the importance of walkable downtowns to attracting business and investment. Amenities like good transit, bike […]

China could start reducing energy use in the next 15 years

Just as U.S. emissions are sneaking back up to 2005 levels, greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage in China could be on their way back down, says a new study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. This analysis shows Chinese emissions peaking between 2025 and 2030, and energy use starting to drop as early as […]

Environmental regulations visible from space

We're learning a lot about space spiders and space bacteria from the nerd horde at the NASA tweetup, but somehow this one from Rachel Maddow writer Tricia McKinney is the most chilling. (She's citing astronaut Leland Melvin.) It's true:

DOE shocker: the future will be like the past, but more so

Last October, I had some fun looking at the Department of Energy’s historic predictions of natural gas prices and noting their consistent failure to, uh, predict. From 2004 to 2010, natural gas prices were massively volatile, ranging from $4 to $11 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) (on an annual, inflation-adjusted basis). Not only did […]

Nader: Obama’s guaranteed to win, so why not make him sweat?

Former Green presidential candidate — and former presumed Democratic spoiler — Ralph Nader doesn't plan to run again this time around. But that isn't keeping him from political machinations. Nader's plan for 2012: Obama's gonna win anyway, so why not put some pressure on him to move leftward? Obama's win is basically guaranteed, thanks to […]

Solar PV gets grid parity for 78 million Americans with 'balance of system' best practices

Cutting non-module solar photovoltaic (PV) costs with best design practices could make solar PV cost less than grid electricity for more than 25 percent of Americans. Half of the installed cost of a solar PV array is the solar module, but the other half (the “balance of system”) involves labor, assembly, and other components. With […]

New hot GOP thing: Voting for oil subsidies, then saying you oppose them

Three's a trend, so we're officially calling oil subsidy doubletalk the Instagram of this season's GOP. First John Boehner said oil companies "ought to be paying their fair share," until his handlers stepped in and told everyone he didn't mean it and oil companies definitely shouldn't do anything fair at all. Now two more representatives, Daniel […]