Latest Articles

Greenpeace calls on world leaders to stop rainforest destruction

Photo courtesy Greenpeace International via FlickrLast week, Greenpeace activists blocked rainforest destruction in Indonesia’s Kampar Peninsula by chaining themselves to excavators. Activists then draped a bright red “Obama You Can Stop This” banner over the destruction and called on the world’s leaders to stop deforestation at next month’s climate talks in Copenhagen. The protest came […]

Europe to easily beat Kyoto target

Europe made a major commitment under the Kyoto Protocol that U.S. conservatives have been telling us for years it would never achieve.  In fact, the Europeans are poised to surpass their targets under the terms of the Protocol. It is no longer plausible for those who don’t want a U.S. cap-and-trade system to point to […]

Salvadoran mudslides: A plea for climate change solutions and holistic water policy

Torrents of mud and boulders flattened villages in El Salvador recently, leaving over 100 people dead and thousands homeless. From all indications, climate change will be most acutely felt in an escalating frequency and ferocity of floods and droughts. It’s chilling to think that we ought to expect much more of this kind of devastation […]

U.N. deputy says Copenhagen deal may take two stage approach

The top climate lieutenant to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that a major — though perhaps preliminary — international agreement to curb global warming is still possible in Copenhagen. One leading option is to set low targets for emissions reductions initially and to boost them if global warming gets worse. Janos Pasztor, director […]

USGBC jobs finds green building to support millions of U.S.jobs

USGBC/Booz Allen Hamilton Report Shows Green Construction to Contribute $554 Billion to U.S. GDP Between 2009 and 2013. The U.S. Green Building Council is having its huge annual conference now — you can watch live streams and archived videos of the leading experts on clean energy and energy efficiency here.  And they just released a […]

Why solar energy trumps coal power

The color of solar cells — and their short energy payback — are trivial factors when considering the huge climate benefit they provide in avoiding the release of CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels. That was a central point in my first post debunking the error-riddled book Superfreakonomics.  By failing to retract the many […]

Veterans Day, 2029

This post is an update of Memorial Day, 2029. The two worst direct impacts to humans from our unsustainable use of energy will, I think, be Dust-Bowlification and sea level rise, Hell and High Water.  But another impact — far more difficult to project quantitatively because there is no paleoclimate analog — may well affect […]

Maryland county draws a “car-free blueprint for growth”

Montgomery County redefined the way it will grow in the next two decades when lawmakers endorsed a plan Tuesday that encourages development where residents can easily live a car-free lifestyle. The County Council, after weeks of intense debate over the county’s growth policy, unanimously agreed to give developers discounts to build dense developments near transit […]

Must-see video of Sen. Kerry grilling AEI’s Kenneth Green

Senator Kerry:  Has your study been peer reviewed? Kenneth Green:  No, I don’t work in the peer review literature, Senator. I don’t work for a university. Steven Hayward, the F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently said, “The brain waves of the American right continue to be erratic, when they are not flat-lining.”  […]

Why Senator Inhofe is going to Copenhagen

Thousands and thousands of climate science advocates — including me — will be in Copenhagen next month trying to advance an international deal that gives the world a chance to avoid catastrophic global warming. And then there will be the man even the Washington Post calls “the last flat-earther,” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL).  Why is […]