Latest Articles

Down the bureaucratic rabbit hole with the Corps of Engineers

In a post last week on the bureaucratic inflighting over Louisiana’s coastal restoration efforts, I took a “the system’s broken” point of view. Chris Macaluso, a spokesman for the state’s coastal restoration efforts, sent me an email that elaborates on some of the ways the system is broken. The state government — which ought to […]

Navy can use sonar despite risk of whale harm, says Supreme Court

Photo: bbum In a big setback for whales and environmentalists, the U.S. Supreme Court has yanked restrictions on sonar use in Navy training exercises near the California coast. The court, which split 5-4, didn’t quibble with the Navy’s own estimates that sonar can lead to substantial and irreparable harm to whales. However, the majority opinion […]

A potentially game-changing development in concentrated solar PV

In the Toronto Star, Tyler Hamilton takes a close look at a cool new company, Morgan Solar, which has developed a potentially revolutionary form of "concentrating photovoltaic" solar technology. It’s intended to be simple and cheap enough to make solar ubiquitous, particularly for the developing world. Here’s the nut: Morgan Solar has come up with […]

Why taxes can’t get us where we need to go on transportation

As of Monday, the average price of gasoline in the U.S. was down to $2.22 a gallon, brushing up against $1.50 in some places. The price of oil was under $60/bbl. When gas and oil prices fall, there are always two reactions: first, great lamentations that alternative and renewable energy investments no longer make economic […]

Will Obama create a new energy council, as recommended by the Center for American Progress?

A year ago, the policy wonks at the Center for American Progress laid out a plan for what they’d like to see the next president do on a variety of issues, including energy and climate change [PDF]. The plan includes a proposal to create a National Energy Council, headed by a national energy adviser at […]

IEA forecasts boom in renewables through 2030

The influential International Energy Agency has released its annual report on world energy demand, predicting that renewables will make big gains worldwide, increasing their overall market share 5 percent to meet 23 percent of the world’s total energy needs by 2030. However, coal consumption is also predicted to increase, eventually providing some 44 percent of […]

Japan’s emissions hit record levels

Last year, Japan’s greenhouse-gas emissions reached record levels, hitting 1.5 billion tons of CO2 equivalent — an increase of some 2.3 percent. Much of the rise was due to an earthquake shutting down the world’s largest nuclear plant in northwestern Japan, which pushed utilities to rely more on fossil fuels. But critics have also said […]

Major mass-transit initiatives did well in U.S. election

Overall, more than 70 percent of the major public-transit projects that appeared on ballots in the United States on Nov. 4 were approved, according to the mass-transit group Center for Transportation Excellence. Some of the more notable projects approved by voters were a high-speed rail network in California and $18 billion in public-transit improvements in […]

The president-elect on greening the auto industry

Since President-elect Barack Obama is talking about economic support for the flailing auto-industry, here’s a flashback (via Ezra Klein) to nearly three years ago, when he was merely Sen. Obama: Already, hundreds of fueling stations use a blend of ethanol and gasoline known as E85, and there are millions of cars on the road with […]

Obama on Grist

Just for kicks, I went and searched for the very first mention of Obama’s name on Grist. It came on 27 July 2004, the day of Obama’s fateful speech to the Democratic National Convention, in a dispatch from Mary Sullivan, a delegate. This is what she said: Most inspiring was Barack Obama, 2004 Democratic candidate […]