Latest Articles

NYC announces new, voluntary plan to encourage hybrid taxis

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined a new, voluntary plan to encourage taxi-fleet owners to use hybrid vehicles after the city’s initial plan to dramatically increase taxi fuel-efficiency was struck down by a federal judge last month.

International talks to save Atlantic tuna begin in Morocco

Representatives from some 46 nations are meeting this week in Morocco to try to hash out an agreement on stemming overfishing of imperiled bluefin tuna while still keeping the bluefin fishing industry alive. Experts say the sustainable catch limit in the Mediterranean Sea should be about 15,000 tons a year, but last year fleets caught […]

Robert Hirsch suggests ‘keeping relatively quiet’ in near-term about peak oil

The WSJ blog reprints an incredibly dumb “You can’t handle the truth!” memo from uber-peaker Robert Hirsch. Yes, the author of the seminal 2005 study [PDF] funded by the Bush Energy Department on “Peaking of World Oil Production” has written a memo “To The Peak Oil Community,” recommending that group “minimize its effort to awaken […]

Concerns raised about wildfire-fighting chemicals

As wildfires rage in southern California, concerns are burgeoning about the chemical mix that firefolk drop as a fire retardant. It’s “fairly well known that it’s toxic to aquatic organisms, to fish,” says one fire management officer; nonetheless, notes another firefighter, “It’s the people whose houses are not on fire that are concerned about it.”

Western lands opened to oil-shale development

The Bush administration on Monday cleared the way for tens of thousands of acres in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming to be used for oil-shale development, publishing final rules governing how federal land will be leased for extraction of the expensive, pollute-y, only recently un-banned fuel source. Companies tapping into oil shale will have to pay […]

Newsweek considers an Obama baby boom

Newsweek gets the headline of the week award as it ponders the possibility of an post-election baby boom: Hope and euphoria, says University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz, are a serious aphrodisiac. And voters under 30 went for Obama by a margin of 2 to 1. When you combine those two elements — randy people […]

To save themselves, the Big Three should become ‘transportmakers’

Irony of ironies, the one set of products that could save GM is the one that GM destroyed — the electric trolley systems of America. According to the well-known research of Bradford Snell, GM killed the electric trolley, because in 1922 they decided that the only way to increase car sales was to eliminate the […]

Schwarzenegger bringing governors and international leaders to California to talk climate

On Tuesday and Wednesday, David and I will be in Los Angeles attending the Governors’ Global Climate Summit, hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The summit is bringing together governors (as the name suggests) and international leaders to talk about their programs to address climate change and energy concerns, in hopes of forging partnerships going forward. The […]

Giant public-lands bill put on hold ’til next year

A bill that would protect millions of acres of public land is being put on hold until the new year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Monday. The Omnibus Public Land Management Act passed out of committee with bipartisan support, but Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has threatened to filibuster over concerns that it will […]

Food miles are a distraction, climate-wise

One hesitates to agree with Ron Bailey given his doctrinaire libertarianism, but in a somewhat narrow sense I think he’s right about this: in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions, food localism is a red herring. That is to say: Eating local out of concern over carbon emissions is misguided. Food travel is not a big part […]