Latest Articles

56 Papers in 45 Countries Publish Joint Editorial

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last […]

Time on hacked emails

Bryan Walsh has a long analysis in Time magazine that is well worth reading:  “The Stolen E-Mails: Has ‘Climategate’ Been Overblown?“  He finds no significant impact on our understanding of the science — like most sober looks at the issue: Nature editorial: “Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real […]

The EPA to the rescue?

On Monday, the first day of Copenhagen, the EPA announced that it has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, which is a none-too-thinly-veiled warning to Congress that if it doesn’t act the EPA may.

Political smarts key to success for Australia’s green tech industry

As I boarded my flight back to California in Brisbane, Australia, last Wednesday, I received an email alert that the Australian Senate had just defeated the Labor government’s climate change legislation. Only days earlier victory seemed all but assured, allowing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to go to Copenhagen with an iron-clad, albeit weak, agreement in […]

1,000 WVU students petition college to flunk big coal barons

Calling on their campus to move beyond coal — and use previously donated coal company contributions to honor fallen Crandall Canyon coal miners, not MSHA-fined coal barons Bob Murray and Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship — the West Virginia University Sierra Student Coalition presented over 1,000 petition signatures to WVU president Jim Clements today.  The […]

Flooding in Freetown

Most people love their home town. But what if you lived in a regularly flooded slum? Kroo Bay is a community of 16,000 people living at the bottom of a valley in Freetown, Sierra Leone separated from the sea by a rubbish dump. During the rainy season once or twice a year, and with increasing frequency, the whole area floods.

Twists and turns on the ‘Hope-to-Despair Express’

The Rutschbanen roller coaster.Photo courtesy wikimedia commonsCOPENHAGEN — The Danish capital’s famous Tivoli gardens boasts an equally celebrated roller coaster. Built in 1914, it is the oldest all-wooden one still operating in the world; being at the climate summit here over the last two days has felt like taking as ride on it. In truth, […]

New data paints a more toxic picture of TVA coal ash spill

The disastrous coal ash spill that occurred a year ago at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee dumped a whopping 2.66 million pounds of 10 toxic pollutants into the nearby Emory and Clinch rivers — more than all the surface-water discharges from all U.S. power plants in 2007. That’s one of […]

Take a walk through the JP Green House [video]

JP Green House walk-through from Ken Ward on Vimeo. Walk through of JP Green House, by Ken Ward, co-founder, and Simon Hare & Declan Keefe of Placetailor, showing materials, design and construction techiques being used, aiming to meet passivhaus standards and meet negative, net carbon impact objective.

Study says green shoppers more likely to later cheat, steal

Dearests, I know this won’t apply to any of you, but it is a curious phenomenon: according to a piece in Slate, a recent psychological study shows that a small group of shoppers who bought green products later acted badly in constructed situations — in one case, sharing less money with those in need, and […]