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Committed environmentalist Stéphane Dion faces uphill fight in Canadian election

The delegates had worked for 36 hours straight at the international gathering in Montreal in 2005 intended to keep the Kyoto Protocol from stalling. The deadline to adjourn had passed, and so had a long night of high drama and low obstinacy. Stéphane Dion. In the bleary dawn of 6 a.m., as the translators threatened […]

New Jersey moves to become premier U.S. offshore wind-power hub

New Jersey this week opened a new front in its battle to be a leader in renewable energy generation. Gov. Jon Corzine (D) announced an ambitious goal to triple the amount of wind power the state plans to use by 2020 to 3,000 Megawatts, or about 13 percent of the state’s total electricity. The wind-power […]

E.U. parliament to vote on climate proposals amid financial crisis

Members of the European Parliament’s environment committee on Tuesday will vote on key green initiatives proposed earlier this year, among them plans to alter the European Union’s emissions-trading system, ramp up spending on carbon capture and storage technology, and eventually ban construction of new coal-fired power plants. The proposals are all part of the E.U.’s […]

Enviros suggest questions for Tuesday’s townhall-style debate

Eleven days after their first matchup, John McCain and Barack Obama will meet again in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday night for a “townhall format” debate. NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw will be the moderator, but it will be crowd members asking the questions, all of whom are supposedly undecided voters. There will be between 80 […]

Christine MacDonald on Big Green NGOs and soy expansion in Brazil

Cargill and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) have a long-standing relationship dating back to the 1980s. Cargill and TNC share a mutual interest in developing science-based, improved agricultural management practices that guarantee the productivity and enduring health of the ecosystem and landscape.  — From a joint Cargill/TNC document [PDF] dated February 2006 — In her new […]

Must-read NYT Magazine: ‘Capitalism to the Rescue’

The New York Times Magazine has a long article on how uber-VC Kleiner Perkins is helping to jumpstart the clean-tech revolution. It is a must-read because what Kleiner and other VCs are doing — pushing a broad spectrum of carbon-mitigating technologies out of the lab and into the market — is some of the most […]

The energy tax credits in the bailout bill, part 1

The bailout legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush on Friday has a $17 billion energy tax package. This post will focus on the clean energy credits. Part 2 will focus on the dirty ones. The biggest winner is certainly solar. As Scott Sklar, former head of the Solar Energy Industries […]

Snippets from the news

• Why CDC responded with “lack of urgency” to formaldehyde warnings. • 500,000 gallons of oil spilled from Hurricane Ike. • Democratic Republic of Congo cancels two-thirds of logging contracts. • Expert says 99 percent of Alaska’s glaciers are in decline. • Michigan governor signs renewables legislation. • Algae fuels the green revolution. • Ted […]

The pet-food industry takes a serious look at distillers grains

Should the mush left over after the ethanol process — known as distillers grains — be fed to farm animals? There’s been little real debate around that question, even though a) heavy use of distillers grains as cow feed has been linked to deadly E. Coli 0157H7 outbreaks; and b), the mush has been shown […]

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been lax on industrial pollution

Though Alaska has a birth-defect rate twice the national average, and though exposure to industrial toxins has been strongly linked to birth defects, Gov. Sarah Palin has made little effort to keep industrial pollution at bay. To the contrary: Thanks to Palin’s nod, Alaska is home to the only coastal fishery in the U.S. where […]