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Breaking: Rangel agrees to June 19 deadline for climate bill from House Ways and Means

Washington Insight/Energy news brief from the Washington Times just reported: Chairman Charles Rangel of the House Ways and Means Committee said he learned today that his panel has a deadline of June 19 to complete its version of the cap-and-trade bill now pending in the House. The New York Democrat told reporters, “We’re going to […]

Europeans demand investigation of the CAFO/swine flu link

Swine flu continues Maroon lagoon: Take a dip in a hog-waste cesspool? spreading across the globe, killing people–even (gasp) Americans. (Eleven have died in New York City alone.) Ho-hum. As I predicted a few weeks ago, the flu scare has skulked off the front pages and into the realms of historical amnesia, that vast American […]

Must-read new story on the Tennessee coal ash disaster and the myth of “clean coal”

Stop what you’re doing and proceed immediately to the current issue of GQ magazine, which contains a blockbuster piece of investigative journalism: “Black Tide,” by Sean Flynn. Here’s the slug: Just days before Christmas last year, an environmental disaster one hundred times the size of the Exxon Valdez (yes, you read that right) unfolded on […]

A new tool for navigating around overfishing and mercury taint

Chart by Neil Banas. Here’s a PDF version.   Not long ago, I arrived at a fishmonger (Carrboro, N.C.’s Tom’s Seafood) just before closing time looking for a main course — preferably one that didn’t wouldn’t contribute to stripping the oceans bare or addle my tired brain with lashings of mercury (courtesy of coal-fired power […]

Anti-CAFO ads running in DC Metro

File this under intriguing. From Ag Professional (via a press release, I think) A new ad campaign is asking area commuters and people visiting Capitol Hill “Who’s hogging our antibiotics?” The series of ads, revealed in D.C. Metro stations and trains this week by the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming, is part […]

Three crucial steps to fixing climate change in cities

I was just in Boston at the excellent Living Cities Green Boot Camp, which was focused on what it will take to actually start hugely and radically retrofitting existing buildings in cities. Cities are, as you all know, a huge lever in solving climate change. Big cities have big climate footprints, and the bulk of […]

90 months and counting

This piece was written for The Guardian by Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation in Britain. Ten months have passed since pointing out that we have, at best, 100 left before a new, far more dangerous phase of global warming begins. The “chatter” of concern is getting louder. But at the same […]

GM sells Hummer to China — the second mistake by those clueless new owners?

China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company has agreed to buy the Hummer brand from GM for less than $500 million, according to a source familiar with the transaction -- well off its peak value of a decade ago.

Nobelist Krugman slams Reaganite Feldstein on global warming economics

Nobel prize-winning NYT columnist Paul Krugman has been doing some terrific writing on the economics of climate action (see Climate action “now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump” by giving “businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities” and Krugman strongly endorses Waxman-Markey). Now he has turned his attention […]

Waxman-Markey climate bill taken off the fast track by House leaders

“It doesn’t have to be this month,” Waxman said. “It could be July. But July is going to be awfully crowded with health care. We’ve got to get the bills to the floor and passed by the end of July. And that’s our goal. Both climate and health care.” So says House Energy and Commerce […]