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  • New W.Va. senator won’t help climate bill — and maybe nothing else will either

    West Virginia’s new senator, Carte Goodwin (D)Senate Democrats get a little of their groove back today when a replacement for the late Sen. Robert Byrd (W. Va.) is sworn in. But don’t expect him to bail them out on climate change. I’m a coal man: Carte Goodwin, a 36-year-old attorney, is being seen as a […]

  • The Gulf Coast joins an oil-soiled planet

    More oil is spilled in the Niger Delta every year than has been spilled in the Gulf so far.Photo courtesy Amnesty International Italia via FlickrThis essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. If you live on the Gulf Coast, welcome to the real world of oil — and […]

  • Is the population bomb ever going to explode? [AUDIO]

    Environmentalists and human-rights advocates regularly point to a growing world population as a potential source of strife. But one environmental journalist doesn’t agree. Fred Pearce, author of The Coming Population Crash, argues that fears of a population explosion are overblown. His recent post on Grist sparked a sharp rebuttal from Robert Walker, executive vice president […]

  • The next phase of the Gulf oil disaster: lawyers and lobbyists descend

    Watch out: They’re coming …We’ve gone from a gush to a seep in the Gulf.  Sounds like progress. But in some ways, things are only beginning to get oily. This is the part where the lawyers and the lobbyists come in.     What’s ours is ours: Let’s start with a report from the Mobile Press-Register that […]

  • Energy ministers meet in U.S. to discuss clean energy

    Who will lead the global race for the clean energy future?Photo courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard via flickrThe race for the clean energy future comes to Washington, D.C. today — only symbolically if the U.S. doesn’t seize the moment. Energy ministers from 20 countries that account for over 80 percent of the world’s global […]

  • Clean energy legislation is ‘America’s mission,’ says retired military chief

    Brigadier Gen. Steven Anderson, who served under Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, calls clean energy legislation not only a military priority, but an American mission in a new ad from VoteVets.org. Here, he urges senators to pass climate and clean energy legislation, saying it could help alleviate America’s dependence on foreign oil and save the […]

  • BP launches effort to control scientific research of oil disaster

    If BP has its way, important scientific research and data could be closed off to the public.Photo courtesy Greenpeace USA 2010 via FlickrCross-posted from Think Progress. Foreign oil giant BP is on a spending spree, buying Gulf Coast scientists for its private contractor army. Scientists from Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University, and Texas A&M […]

  • The problem with ‘green group’ bashing

    As Democrats in D.C. and their allies struggle to cobble together a meaningful climate bill, many are lining up to bash green groups. Some recent pieces have been excellent: Johann Hari’s ‘The Wrong Kind of Green‘ in The Nation. Others have been predictable: the folks at the Breakthrough Institute have stayed on message.  Now here […]

  • A deepwater drilling moratorium might be a bad idea for Louisiana

    We can’t all go cold turkey.This article is part of a special issue of The Nation magazine about green energy, “Freedom From Oil.”  PORT SULPHUR, La. — Captain Pete, as everyone in town calls him, has been an oysterman nearly his entire life. He started as a boy, learning the trade from his father, who […]

  • Two takes on antibiotic use on factory farms

    In “Chewing the Scenery,” we round up interesting food-related videos from around the Web. The meat industry wants to be viewed through the softening lens of the supermarket meat case: the shrink-wrapped splendor of chops, steaks, and breasts, presented in affordable and bountiful stacks. For the marketing to be effective, the dirty work of getting […]