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“Acid Test” documentary on ocean acidification premieres tonight

Photo: Yuriy via PicasaDive into the NRDC’s new documentary Acid Test and you’re immediately immersed in a beautiful undersea world complete with vibrant coral reefs, graceful kelp beds, and rhythmic schools of fish. But Acid Test is no Blue Planet, thanks to heavy use of green-screen technology. And what’s in front of those screens is […]

Offsets and Big Ag: Does the climate bill give away too much to the farm sector?

Special Series: What’s the deal with offsets?Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / GristThe compliance market for offsets proposed under the House’s American Clean Energy and Security Act would not just mean more opportunity for companies already in the business of selling carbon offsets. It would also result in a major realignment in the types of […]

Pacific NW landowners team up to market forest offsets

Owners of forestland in the Pacific NW could benefit more under a national carbon offsets system, as trees common to the region store more carbon per acre than East Coast species. Pictured: Douglas firs in an Oregon forest.Courtesy Ecotrust’s sbeebe via FlickrThough most people probably think of national parks when they think of forests, more […]

Ask Umbra on corn plastic

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, I’ve been noticing lately a lot of “green” businesses and restaurants in my area using compostable plastics, usually made of corn, if I recall correctly. I can’t compost (I know, I know, but I live in a tiny apartment on the third floor with no porch or […]

Surprise, surprise: NWF-sponsored poll finds support for climate bill

Hey, we couldn’t find a photo that screamed “polling,” so how about this period shot of Seattle City Light workers?Seattle Municipal Archives via FlickrThere’s some good news about public support for climate legislation in a new Zogby poll commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). Seventy-one percent of likely voters say they like the American […]

A new sound, a new economy

People often ask me what the environment has to do with poverty and why communities of color are getting so active in the fight against climate change. Earlier this week, Green For All released a video that gets to the heart of the matter. A New Sound communicates both the pain of the old economy […]

NYT: Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say. Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the […]

Climate analyst, author of ‘The Honest Broker’ urges people “Please Read Climate P

UPDATE:  Roger Pielke, Jr. is a Senior Fellow for an organization that is dedicating all of its resources to killing any chance of either a national or international effort to avert catastrophic global warming and to spreading disinformation about Obama, Gore, Congressional Democrats, and the environmental movement.  My bad.  I keep forgetting how many people […]

Climate disobedience: Is a new “Seattle” in the making?

This guest essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. Research assistance was provided by Sean Nortz. Will climate disobedience heat up in the months before Copenhagen?In the early morning of October 8, 2007, a small group of British Greenpeace activists slipped inside a hulking smokestack that towers more […]

Dynegy out of the new coal business

This is the weekly post from Bruce Nilles, director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. Three years ago Dynegy launched plans to partner with LS Power and become the largest new developer of coal-fired power plants.  Yesterday Dynegy officially terminated those plans, including selling its shares in a coal-fired power plant currently under construction Coal […]