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The Corndoggle

The Portland, Ore. “Willamette Week” has a fairly decent piece on the (fiscal) implosion of the outrageously heavily subsidized ethanol plant in Clatskanie, Ore., which (briefly) produced some “homegrown” motor fuel using 100% imported corn and 100% imported natural gas.

Send in your green questions for Grist for Earth Day answers

Got a burning green question Grist hasn't answered yet? (Hard to believe, I know.) Think quick because you have until 3 PM Pacific today to send 'em in because our big brains -- along with a few other online eco-friends' -- will be answering them in a video montage for Earth Day.

15 green sports venues

Think the only thing green about pro sports is the turf? Think again. As the first crack of the bat rings through the spring air this week, we take a look at sports venues in North America that are scoring big on the eco-field (now if only the teams could do something about all that […]

Umbra advises on running shoes

Q. Hi Umbra, I’m a long-distance runner in need of a new pair of shoes. I’m looking for the company with the most sustainable practices. Any suggestions? I’ve heard some promising things from different companies (e.g., Nike’s shoe-recycling program, ASICS’ commitment to recycled materials), but I remain undecided about what which company offers the best […]

Aviation industry proposing solutions to solving their global warming pollution?

Photo: The Shane H via Flickr While most of the climate negotiations in Bonn have been focused on key issues around the overall agreement, as I’ve discussed here and here, there has also been some side discussions on other key issues. I’ve been involved in a couple of discussions (outside the formal negotiations) around how […]

Friedman uses perch at Gray Lady to push for carbon tax

Tom Friedman says cap-and-trade is in truth a form of taxation. But taxes don’t suck. Why don’t Dems and the adminstration just tell it like it is and push for something more straightforward: a carbon tax. Such a tax, he goes on to say, should be pitched as a way of renewing the American economy […]

Granholm tries to convert Michigan “from rust to green”

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) is trying to rescue her state’s tanking economy by taking it “from rust to green.” On Monday, Granholm signed a law that will channel $220 million toward tax credits for the development and manufacture of electric-vehicle batteries, on top of $335 million in credits the state approved in January. “This […]

Energy politics shouldn’t depend on whether you’re Republican or Democrat, says Chu

“We have a problem and we’ve got to get it solved. The politics of energy are such that it actually shouldn’t be a political question. Let’s get to a different point in the discussion about what American needs, and what this country really needs is something where it doesn’t really matter whether you’re a Republican […]

Where's the national outrage on Blair Mountain?

When Walmart recently announced its intention to build a super-center near the Wilderness Battlefield in Virginia, filmmaker Ken Burns and a host of Pulitzer Prize-winning historians denounced the move for its obvious offense to our national heritage site.

We need that same outrage for another battlefield under assault.

Moving beyond vintage-differentiated regulation

A common feature of many environmental policies in the United States is vintage-differentiated regulation (VDR), under which standards for regulated units are fixed in terms of the units’ respective dates of entry, with later vintages facing more stringent regulation. In the most common application, often referred to as “grandfathering,” units produced prior to a specific […]