Latest Articles

Green journos: Scientific and idealistic and ignorant and cootie-covered

MarketWatch’s Jon Friedman pens a truly incoherent and dunderheaded attack on environmental journalists. Look at this mess, taken from the middle of the piece: Beyond sticking to a few catch-phrases and earnestly spouting a do-good philosophy gleaned from Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” the media aren’t doing much to try to explain the green […]

UCS on CCS

The Union of Concerned Scientists recently put out a new report on "clean coal." The conclusion: The UCS report, “Coal Power in a Warming World,” proposes that the federal government fund five to 10 full-scale demonstration projects to test carbon-capture-and-storage technology’s ability to cut coal power plant emissions. The report also calls for a halt […]

What should Google do next?

I was excited to read this L.A. Times piece, which seemed to hold out the prospect of evidence that Google is moving into smart-grid technology. Instead of evidence, though, there was wild and utterly unmotivated speculation. I do enjoy speculating about what Google will do next though. It’s so nice to have a company with […]

Electric Mini Cooper coming to the U.S.

What’s cute and teeny and charged up? An electric Mini Cooper, which BMW will unveil at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November. Even more exciting — especially if you are among “select private and corporate customers” — a 500-vehicle test fleet will be available for lease in California, New Jersey, and New York early […]

Minn. Rep. Bachmann lists climate policy as among her ‘concerns’ about Barack Obama

On a local news program today, Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann was asked about her statement on Friday that she is “very concerned” that Barack Obama “may have anti-American views.” Bachmann denied saying it. “I feel his views are concerning. I’m calling on the media to investigate them. I’m not saying that his views are […]

Economists weigh in on the need for stimulus spending

The New York Times has a heartening story saying that the need for stimulus spending is widely accepted: But the extra spending, a sore point in normal times, has been widely accepted on both sides of the political aisle as necessary to salvage the banking system and avert another Great Depression. “Right now would not […]

Big Oil and enviros agree: Surging prices were nail in coffin for offshore-drilling ban

The 110th Congress achieved some notable victories for the environmental community. The Democratic majorities secured the first major increase in automobile fuel-economy standards in nearly three decades, along with tougher efficiency rules for household appliances. They extended tax credits for solar and other renewable energy sources. Serious discussion of climate legislation got underway in the […]

Solar industry aims for grid parity in eight years

Solar companies are getting some swagger: “We designed the eight-year tax credit extension very purposely,” said Rhone Resch, president of Solar Energy Industries Association. “We believe that at the end of that time, solar will have achieved grid parity, which means simply that we will be the lowest-cost source of retail electricity in almost all […]

Obama’s pushing a clean energy agenda with swing-voter-pleasing rhetoric

(part the first/ part the second) Let me summarize: Obama is stuck in a peculiar political moment. In substantive terms, he knows that our dire climate and energy situation requires huge and possibly wrenching changes to drive the country away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy and efficiency. He has proposed climate and energy […]

Umbra on deflecting eco-insults

Dear Umbra, Whenever I pick up a piece of trash a friend has thrown on the ground, or ask them where their recycling bins are, they call me a dirty tree-hugging hippie. This doesn’t bother me, since I know I shower daily and am happy to admit to hugging trees every so often, but they […]