Latest Articles

NYT slams Cheney on pollution policies

The New York Times weighs in on the the Bush administration’s possible last-minute move to change the new-source review rules under the Clean Air Act, putting the blame on Dick Cheney: Years ago, riding high and wide as the administration’s energy czar, Mr. Cheney promised — privately in meetings with corporate contributors, and publicly in […]

Bush: all the bailout, none of the social benefits

I see that Bush is delightful as always: Complaining about what it termed partisan "gridlock" in Congress, the White House late Friday called on lawmakers to let U.S. auto makers get quick access to a $25 billion federal loan program, by dropping a requirement that the money be spent on converting to fuel-efficient vehicles.

Coal stocks drop in wake of EPA Bonanza decision

A friend wrote and suggested that I check the stock prices for coal companies in the wake of Thursday’s EPA decision. Well looky here! As of Friday: Peabody Energy Corp Change: 2.40 (8.14%) Arch Coal Inc Change: 2.22 (12.28%) Duke Energy CorpChange: 0.47 (2.92%) Couldn’t happen to a nicer industry.

Not investment advice

According to the DOE (see this excellent powerpoint [PDF] by the DOE Solar America program), U.S. electricity demand will grow by 386 terrawatt hours by 2015. According to the EPA, those new electrons won’t come from coal. And there’s no way nukes could come on-line fast enough, even if they got their way. Where are […]

Because small fixes make the biggest difference

Despite the excellent reasons to reject the GM bailout, consider this: a strings-attached investment that tweaked GM’s production model could reap huge climate benefits — perhaps bigger than anything else we do to autos in the near term. That’s because the biggest opportunities in fuel economy are at the low end of the fleet, not […]

The British love Obama too, and hope he’ll inspire climate action

First things first: We love Barack Obama here in Britain, maybe almost as much as you do. Possibly there are disappointed Republican sympathizers in the U.K., but I haven’t met any, and relief at the retreat of Sarah Palin as political force is almost palpable. Across much of Northern Europe we liked Obama so much […]

Confirming Pollan, PNAS study shows that fast-food chains mainly peddle corn

We literally are what we eat; our metabolic function converts the stuff we consume into our material bodies: flesh, bone, hair, etc. In a memorable passage in Micheal Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, a biologist analyzes a strand of his own hair; he finds it shot through with corn’s unique carbon signature. Materially speaking, eaters of the […]

We should be wary of jumping on the ‘individual fishing quota’ bandwagon

I’m not sure what the marine equivalent of a bandwagon is (a love boat?), but there’s one headed our way. I’m talking about the movement called “individual fishing quotas,” as described in a recent Los Angeles Times article. The original theory is straight out of the free market school of economics: Give people the ownership […]

Friday music blogging: Q-Tip

A Tribe Called Quest is one of a small class of hip-hop groups that is beloved by absolutely everyone — rap purists, bohemians, and of course whitey suburbanites. Speaking of that latter demographic, I fell in love with Tribe in college via their stone classic The Low End Theory, which remains one of my all-time […]

Utilities ponder big buy of electric cars

In a move to support flailing automakers — and potentially boost their own bottom line — several big U.S. utilities are considering putting in orders for thousands of electric cars.