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Bike to work, bike from work

Today is Bike-To-Work day. If you don’t have a job and are feeling left out, you have other options. Frankly, I can’t think of a better way to wait out the recession than to take a bike tour. It’s cheap, especially if you camp. It’s the right speed to see a country. It’s carbon-free, natch. […]

Big Food’s ‘local’ push: what’s it really about?

Photo: TheTruthAbout…, via FlickrThe Ethicurean probably had it right when it declared yesterday that “local” jumped the shark. The shark in this case (or is it the jumper? I’m never sure which is which) is Frito-Lay and its Big Food brethren, which have embarked on marketing campaigns emphasizing the “local” producers who supply them. The […]

Mark Mellman must read on climate messaging: ecoAmerica “could hardly be more wrong”

Mark Mellman, a leading pollster for progressives since 1982, has written a must-read op-ed slamming the latest dubious messaging advice: Some progressives seem unwilling to take yes for an answer. Just as the long battle for public opinion on global warming is being won, along comes a well-meaning Bob Perkowitz and his ecoAmerica with a […]

Against the grain of industrial agriculture, truly local bread stages a comeback

David Bauer of Farm and Sparrow BakeryPhoto: April McGregerOn a recent vacation to Asheville, North Carolina, I headed to the market to get a loaf of bread. Asheville is home to a large a number of small-scale bakeries, many of which sell primarily at tailgate markets and wholesale to nearby specialty food shops. I found […]

Debate: Roberts v. ‘clean coal’ flack Joe Lucas

In early April, the excellent investigative journalism show NOW on PBS ran an episode called “Can Coal be Earth-Friendly?“ In conjunction with the episode, NOW hosted an online debate between me and Joe Lucas, spokesflack for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). We were given a series of five questions. We each answered […]

Revamped House climate and energy bill has the votes to pass, says Waxman

Democrats in the House have come close to agreement on a sweeping climate and energy bill. It’s weaker than the original version, but backers say it has enough support to pass. “We have resolved a good number of the issues,” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, told reporters after a […]

Report: Climate change will bring big problems for small number of countries

Here’s one way to break down the effects of fiercer storm surges that will be wrought by climate change: Most land lost: Latin America Most people displaced: Middle East and North Africa Most economic losses: East Asia World Bank economists reached these conclusions in a new draft report [PDF] that assesses the effects sea-level rise […]

Final (ironic) notes on the fake “OMB memo” story

In my post on the development of the fake “OMB memo” story, I speculated wildly — as is my responsibility as a blogger — that some sort of sneaky dirty-energy lobbyist fed the story to Dow Jones’ Ian Talley, the first “real” reporter to do a story on it. It seems the truth may be […]

Memo: Climate change denier wants to give you instant on-air ‘balance’

Marc Morano: Willing to help you out.Heartland Institute Say you’re a harried cable news producer with 24 gaping hours to fill with finished material every day of the week. Say you’re constantly in need of articulate guests to offer a diversity of viewpoints. How do you do it? One way is to take up offers […]

North Pole poised to be largely ice-free by 2020

It’s the ice thickness, stupid. The Arctic ice cover, which has endured for at least 100,000 years, will be all but gone within a decade according to a volume-based projection by a leading British scientist, the BBC reports.  At the same time, “a gruelling 73-day” survey of sea-ice thickness found “the average thickness of the […]