Latest Articles

Food Fight snags documentary honor

For those of you who don’t get quite enough of my writing, you can see me holding forth on the big screen! That is, if the documentary Food Fight finds a distributor. I hope it does; I hear it’s good. (I do get quite enough of my writing, and I’m repelled by the idea of […]

Low donations and diminished endowments will hinder green movement

It’s the end of the year, and if your inbox is anything like mine, you’ve received a deluge of end-of-year donation requests from your favorite nonprofits. On behalf of my brethren nonprofit directors, let me share some insight into current nonprofit funding dynamics before you hit the delete button. First, this was an extraordinary election […]

Utility strikes deal with green groups allowing new coal plants to proceed

Luminant, the largest utility in Texas, struck a deal this week with Public Citizen and the Sierra Club in which the company agreed to use “maximum achievable control technology” to ensure the lowest possible emissions of mercury and other pollutants from two new coal-fired generating units now under construction in the state. In exchange, the […]

City announces plan to develop next-generation electricity grid

The city of Austin, Texas recently announced a smart grid project. Smart grids, you may recall, are one of the core elements of the Grand Climate Plan. Although the Austin project isn’t the first such effort in the country, officials hope that the city will be able to move faster than others, because Austin actually […]

Energy Dept. calls for threefold expansion of Yucca Mountain nuke dump

In a report to Congress, the U.S. Energy Department this week recommended expanding by up to three times the amount of nuclear waste to be buried at the planned Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in Nevada. The agency also recommended delaying a decision on whether to commission another large nuke-waste dump elsewhere in the country, […]

South Korean court jails captain of oil tanker involved in 2007 spill

The captain and first mate of an oil tanker that caused South Korea’s largest oil spill last year have been convicted of criminal negligence for failing to avoid a collision with a barge. Members of the barge crew were also jailed for their role in the collision, which dumped some 2.7 million gallons of crude […]

Conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region devastating forests too

Aside from killing hundreds of thousands of people and displacing millions more, the ongoing conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region is also taking a toll on the environment. Displaced people have cut down huge swaths of forest to make mud bricks in wood-fired kilns and to use as cooking fuel. Farmers expelled from their land have […]

Sources say Obama will drop EPA head and ‘energy czar’ as early as today

A source close to the transition tells me that Obama will drop the names of his energy czar and EPA head today. The decision may be coming out earlier than expected to try to help take the edge off the endless Blagojevich coverage. Al Kamen says his sources tell him the energy czar is going […]

O come all ye enemies of the human race

The American Coalition for Coal Ponies, or America’s Manly Power, or whatever they’re called, has a site up where you can watch little lumps of coal singing bastardized holiday songs. Yes: exploiting religious hymns in service of selling a product that kills tens of thousands of Americans a year and may soon make the planet […]

The 25 middle-aged white guys who are frying the earth

You can find their names here.