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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

Wired: Two top Obama science advisors are tied to Monsanto and Amgen

I hope the executive branch’s "war on science" era ends in January. Heading into a period of climate change, tight fossil energy supplies, growing trouble with food-borne illnesses, declining health metrics, etc, we clearly don’t need a bunch of creationists and climate-change deniers knocking about the White House. At the same time, I hope we […]

States say Pentagon bullies them into not enforcing toxic cleanups

Environmental regulators from more than a dozen states have accused the U.S. Department of Defense of retaliating against them for attempting to enforce cleanup of contaminated military-owned sites. “In the worst-case scenarios, the Department of Defense is intimidating a state environmental agency into not pursing enforcement,” said Steve Brown of the Environmental Council of States […]

Chicago unveils detailed climate plan

Chicago unveiled an ambitious climate-change plan on Thursday aimed at cutting its greenhouse-gas emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 as part of its commitment to meeting the goals of the Kyoto Protocol. Along with over 700 other cities and municipalities in the U.S., Chicago signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, committing it […]