Latest Articles

A new record for the hurricane season of 2008

As Jeff Master, our favorite meteorologist and hurricane blogger, wrote on Saturday: This year is now the only hurricane season on record in the Atlantic that has featured major hurricanes in five separate months. The only year to feature major hurricanes in four separate months was 2005, and many years have had major hurricanes in […]

Obama brings California dreaming

“Now we’ll get our phone calls returned.” — Sen. Dianne Feinstein, on what effect an Obama presidency would have on California, possibly including approval of the state’s tailpipe standards and big green energy investments that would boost Silicon Valley

New program will certify responsible e-waste recyclers

Monday saw the dawn of the e-Stewards Initiative, the first independently accredited certification program for responsible recycling of electronic waste. “By choosing an e-Steward recycler,” explains Sarah Westervelt of the program, “consumers and large businesses are assured that their old computers and TVs will be safely managed, and not simply tossed into a local landfill, […]

Chorus of intellectuals and activists call on Obama to think big

Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman to Barack Obama: be ambitious (really ambitious)! Beltway CW bellwether Fareed Zakaria to Barack Obama: be ambitious! Former Secretary of Labor and current Obama adviser Robert Reich to Barack Obama: be ambitious! Nobel-winning climate advocate Al Gore to Barack Obama: be ambitious! Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz to Barack Obama: be ambitious! […]

More enviro groups argue in favor of factoring greenhouse-gas emissions into EPA biofuel rules

More environmental groups are calling on the U.S. EPA to consider biofuels’ life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions as the agency draws up rules for the Renewable Fuel Standard. The groups want to make sure that any emissions resulting from land-use changes are taken into consideration. On Oct. 21, a handful of biofuel-industry representatives and academics asked EPA […]

Why polluter lobbyists are rallying to protect ‘Tailpipe Johnny’

While the Obama transition team starts assembling the pieces of his administration, one of D.C.’s most intriguing subplots is unfolding: the contest between Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.) for chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees clean air, global warming, and other critical environmental legislation. Last week the […]

America’s energy crunch comes home

This is a guest essay by Michael T. Klare, a professor at Hampshire College and an author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. It was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. —– Of all the challenges facing President Barack Obama next January, none […]

Governating Alaska: not as fun when oil revenues are down

“Now we kick in that fiscal conservativeness that needs to be engaged, and we progress this state with $57-a-barrel oil.” — Alaska governor Sarah Palin, commenting on the changed fiscal landscape she’s returned to in her home state

Tardy reflections on the election of Barack Obama

It feels a little weird that Obama won the election and I haven’t written anything about it. Everyone with a platform apparently feels obliged to say something profound, but after several aborted attempts, I find myself drained and utterly inadequate to the historical moment. I just want to take the world’s longest nap. Rather than […]

How design must change in a warming, oil-scarce world

This week I was able to attend a conference on urban planning hosted by the Penn Institute for Urban Research and the Rockefeller Foundation. Fifty years ago, the same entities had put together another urban conference, at which gathered names like Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford, intellectuals who shaped the design world’s thinking about cities […]