Latest Articles
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Good news: New EPA boiler regs include output-based standards
Finally the day you’ve all been waiting for has arrived: EPA has released its new boiler emissions rules for hazardous pollutants! (The cool kids call it “the boiler MACT.”) Most review and discussion of these rules so far has been silent on the most significant aspect: they introduce output-based emissions standards. As Grist readers know, […]
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Oil-fattened Congress well on way to preventing EPA from regulating greenhouse gases
Congress is now moving to make it illegal for the government to regulate greenhouse gases, under any circumstances. Apparently killing off possibly the last chance the U.S. had to act on climate change in time to avoid its worst impacts wasn’t enough to sate their appetite for destruction? On Friday, the House Committee on Energy […]
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Opposing bike lanes is bad politics and bad policy, says Rep. Earl Blumenauer
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.)Photo: Thomas Le NgoGiven the inflamed debate that’s going on in New York right now over bike lanes in general and one bike lane in particular — on Brooklyn’s Prospect Park West — I wanted to get some perspective from the eminently reasonable Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). Founder and cochair of the […]
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Guess what else the GOP wants to cut? Tsunami monitoring!
Whatever, my kid can do that.Image: Pacific Tsunami Warning CenterIf we had any evidence that Republican House members were capable of feeling shame, we’d expect them to be so red right now. Mother Jones reports that one of the items on the GOP’s budgetary chopping block is … tsunami monitoring. Last month, they voted to […]
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Mistakes economists make, climate/energy edition
Economist Tyler Cowen has a list of mistakes made by liberal and conservative economists. They are largely of the intellectual, “you’re doing economics wrong” sort. I’m more interested in Ezra Klein’s subsequent list of mistakes economists make in their interactions with journalists and the political class. These are the ones that really grind my gears […]
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Japan is not a nuclear conflagration right now. Would we be so lucky?
Japan has declared a state of emergency at the Fukushima nuclear reactor -- but thanks to good engineering, there's been no radiation leak and there's no risk of one. With more than 50 nuclear plants in the earthquake-vulnerable country, things would have been way worse without earthquake precautions in place. Does U.S. infrastructure have that kind of protection?
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Does climate change mean more tsunamis?
March 11 tsunami leads to an explosion at Chiba Works, an industrial (chemical, steel, etc.) facility in Ichihara, Japan.Photo: @odyssey Update: The intent of this piece isn’t to attribute today’s tragedy to climate change. Apologies to those whom I misled with the headline. It was meant literally, as in: Tsunamis are inundations of shorelines and […]
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Sustainable Apparel Coalition delivers the eco-skinny on your skinny jeans
Wheredja get those jeans?I spend a lot of time shining a light on murky areas of the food system, but what about the industrial-apparel complex? Just as the food we eat has a material basis and a history, so do our clothes. It turns out that I know a lot more about the (grass-fed, local) […]
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During climate hearing, Markey asks if anti-science GOP will repeal gravity
Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. With sardonic humor, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) mocked today’s markup of legislation to overturn the scientific finding that fossil-fuel pollution is causing dangerous climate change. Markey, who championed climate legislation that passed the House of Representatives in 2009, protested the energy subcommittee’s consideration of the Upton-Inhofe bill to overturn the […]
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Nicholas Stern: Climate inaction risks a new world war
Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. This is the first in a three-part interview with economist Lord Nicholas Stern on climate policy. Lord Nicholas Stern, one of the world’s most prominent climate economists, believes that failure to address global warming could eventually lead to World War III. In 2006, he produced the “Stern Review” on behalf […]
