Latest Articles

Diversion of Great Lakes water will soon be illegal

If you don’t border the Great Lakes, keep your grubby hands out of ’em. That’s the general message of a bill that would bar any major water diversion from Lakes Erie, Ontario, Huron, Michigan, and Superior, unless all eight lake-bordering states approve. The so-called Great Lakes Compact, which has passed Congress and heads to the […]

Madam I’m Adam

Adam the first: Credit crunch could take shine off efficiency improvements Adam the second: … it’s a great time to be in the efficiency business. Explain yourselves, Adams!

Taking the red tape out of green power

Adam Stein predicts that the financial meltdown will cool the ardor for carbon legislation, and I agree. But that doesn’t mean that policymakers will throw up their hands. Here are my predictions. One, the framing will shift from making fossil fuels more expensive (e.g. putting a price on carbon, a carbon tax, etc.) to making […]

Palin’s climate skepticism is irrelevant

The Washington Post‘s Juliet Eilperin writes a piece on Sarah Palin’s climate skepticism that seems, like so many articles in this genre, to dance around something obvious. In the piece, upon finding out that Palin doesn’t believe in anthropogenic climate change, one Alaska enviro is quoted saying "now I know why" Palin fought emission reductions. […]

Western states announce proposal for cutting GHG emissions

Participants in the Western Climate Initiative on Tuesday announced specific plans for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. The seven states and four provinces will initiate a cap-and-trade program, establishing a carbon market that applies to industries and utilities by 2012 and transportation, heating, and other fuels by 2015. The proposed […]

The financial crisis, how we got here, and who knows what to do about it

David Roberts recently said about the current financial crisis: • Nobody clearly understands how we got in this situation. • Nobody clearly understands what situation we are in. • Nobody clearly understands what’s going to happen next. The first and second were, I think, serious errors. Dean Baker predicted this back in September of 2002 […]

Hott policy primer

Sightline has a new report out: “Cap and Trade 101: A Climate Policy Primer.” It’s a plainspoken introduction that explains: • The cap, the trade: How cap and trade works • How to evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness, and fairness of a cap and trade system • What about offsets? • What happens to energy prices […]

U.S. biz waiting for regulation before cutting emissions, report shows

Only about one-third of leading U.S. companies have set targets to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, compared to 74 percent of global corporations, says the sixth annual report from the Carbon Disclosure Project. CDP, an influential initiative backed by 385 institutional investors, received input from 64 percent of the Standard & Poor’s 500 U.S. companies (a jump […]

Credit crunch could take shine off efficiency improvements

I previously noted that the financial crisis is likely to be very bad news for renewable energy developers dependent upon access to credit for their cash-hungry projects. Geoffrey Styles points out that a credit crunch will also affect consumer-driven efficiency improvements: If consumers can’t obtain attractive financing for more efficient appliances, heating systems, or rooftop […]

50 most sustainable cities

SustainLane’s annual ranking of the sustainability of America’s 50 largest cities is out. Grist is happy to be located in No. 3 overall, No. 2 in knowledge base, No. 2 in energy and climate change, No. 2 in green economy, and No. 3 in city innovation. There’s no margin in being No. 1 — draws […]