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Our global pyramid scheme

Our mismanaged world economy today has many of the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme takes payments from a broad base of investors and uses these to pay off returns. It creates the illusion that it is providing a highly attractive rate of return on investment as a result of savvy investment decisions […]

How Senate Dems should lure GOP to a climate bill

The greenosphere is all abuzz with the news that a few Republican Senators, led by Lindsey Graham (S.C.), have signaled that they’re open to coming around on the climate bill if certain conditions are met. In classic form, Senate Dems have responded by rushing to signal they they are willing — eager, even! — to […]

Cleantech Open has $100,000 for a green startup idea

Corrections below The Cleantech Open has helped more than 100 startup companies find their footing since it launched in California three years ago.  Now the business competition is expanding in some interesting ways. Earlier this year it added regional events in the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains. This fall it also launched a global “ideas […]

Senate must block OSMRE nominee Pizarchik

As Consol Energy crews clean up another mysterious coal slurry spill in West Virginia today, the nation’s largest producer of high-Btu bituminous coal — and an aggressive operator of devastating mountaintop removal and longwall mines — will be closely watching the nomination hearing of their southwestern Pa. hometown mining bureaucrat Joseph Pizarchik to head the […]

Transgressing identified and quantified planetary boundaries

Apparently, we’ve punched through three of those boundaries already, two of them big time. See here. You can read the entire paper in the journal Nature here. Now, largely because of a rapidly growing reliance on fossil fuels and industrialized forms of agriculture, human activities have reached a level that could damage the systems that […]

Exploring the extreme frontiers of oil drilling

The “Cajun Express” oil rig, tapping the black gold deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico.The oil field known as “Jack” is located 175 miles off the coast of Louisiana, below 7,200 feet of water and another 30,000 feet of seabed, occupying a geological layer formed in the Cenozoic Era more than 60 million years ago. […]

Bangkok: rich countries try to kill Kyoto, youth declare

Today marked one of the final days of the Bangkok U.N. Climate Negotiations. With the end of this intersessional in sight, the International Youth Delegation (IYD) has officially declared “No Confidence” in the road to Copenhagen. With youth delegates from over 30 countries engaging in the Bangkok process, the IYD cited pathetically weak targets from […]

Entourage season finale delivers surprises and sustainability

Warning: If the season finale of Entourage is waiting on your TiVO and you haven’t watched it yet, come back and read this post later as it contains spoilers. On the season finale of HBO’s Entourage, Matt Damon stole the show with a guest appearance as a well-meaning yet overbearing version of himself. But another […]

Are there GOP senators who will back the climate bill?

In July, I speculated that Sen. Lamar Alexander might lead some Republicans to back a climate protection bill if Democratic leaders made some concessions regarding nuclear power. The prospect was tantalizing, as I noted then: “The Democratic caucus is not solid enough on climate issues to presume GOP votes are unneeded. Anyone giving a positive […]

Climate bill breakdown

We’ve taken a good long look at CEJAPA, the 801-page Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act that was introduced recently by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Now, it’s time to see how the Senate bill compares with ACES. the American Clean Energy and Security Act co-sponsored by House members Henry Waxman […]