Latest Articles

House holds hearing on MMS scandal; Kempthorne recommends ethics training

On Thursday the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on the MMS scandal currently providing humorists with so many drilling puns. Pelosi’s blog has an account of the hearing. (See also E&E News, $ub req’d.) The most amusing part was the righteous performance from Rep. George Miller, particularly this exchange with Interior Secretary Dirk […]

An interview with Wikia’s Jimmy Wales about his new green venture

Jimmy Wales. Jimmy Wales, best known as a cofounder of Wikipedia, is now channeling some of his energy and ambition into the environmental realm, aiming to build “the world’s handbook for going green.” Wikia, Inc., Wales’ for-profit company (not to be confused with Wikipedia, a project of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation), announced this month that […]

A weak economy brings a diminished appetite for curbs on carbon emissions

The Freakonomics blog offers up a long-ish but lucid discussion of the ongoing financial crisis. I recommend the whole thing, but in a nutshell: Financial institutions borrow money all the time to fund their investments. When the real estate bubble burst, a lot of those investments lost value rapidly, leaving banks such as Bear Stearns […]

Time’s Michael Scherer strains unsuccessfully to find equivalence in campaign ads

Time’s Michael Scherer wrote a dopey post trying to tag Obama for misleading ads. The Social Security part was dismantled by Media Matters, with additional notes from Josh Marshall and Atrios. In an update, Scherer is unrepentant, claiming he was attacked because he dared question Obama. Of course, counterintuitively going after Obama for misleading ads […]

From Eva to Earthquake

Happily Eva after What do you do when Eva Mendes and Scarlett Johansson want your number? You answer the call. Brother, can you spare me some climate change? Booted from the Arctic by the subprime mortgage crisis global warming, the population of homeless polar bears in D.C. is exploding. And any of them with hopes […]

CARB shoots down the ‘economy vs. environment’ myth … again

The other day, contemplating an Economist story on geoengineering, Andrew Sullivan said, “I much prefer the idea of developing new non-carbon technologies or experimenting with technology to deflect or arrest warming to throwing the global economy into a permanent slowdown.” Sullivan has no particular knowledge of or expertise on climate legislation (not a dig — […]

An interview with author and nutritionist Marion Nestle

The contents of your dog’s bowl — kibble, kibble, more kibble — may not look that interesting, but to nutritionist Marion Nestle, they’re nothing less than a microcosm of the global food system. In her new book Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine, Nestle (pronounced NES-uhl, no relation to the multinational) investigates […]

Meet the Bloggers on enviro issues and the election, live, here, now

Just a reminder, I’m going to be on Meet the Bloggers today at 1 p.m. EDT (now!) talking about energy, the environment, and the elections. Also appearing will be Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog and Brad Johnson, a Gristmill contributor and blogger at the Wonk Room. The featured guest this week is Simran Sethi, the environmental […]

Allocating individual quotas could save many fisheries, study says

Retooling the way fisheries are managed could be the key to their long-term health, according to a new study published in the journal Science. Typical fisheries have mostly relied on a free-for-all style of management where scientists determine the overall allowable catch and then fishers go out and compete with each other to try to […]

From the mouths of oil executives …

“There is certainly some potential. But to me the biggest potential in America that is not exploited is energy savings. There is such an immense opportunity.” — Paolo Scaroni, chief executive of Italian oil giant ENI, on offshore drilling