Latest Articles
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Snippets from the news
• Oil and gas leases on Colorado’s Roan Plateau sell for record amount. • High fuel prices mean ramped up drilling and mining. • Climate change, past forest management make western U.S. susceptible to fire. • Electric bikes sell like hotcakes. • Invasive snail could hurt Lake Michigan. • New species of robin found in […]
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Sen. Boxer none too happy about feds’ attack on ESA
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) wrote a letter Friday to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne expressing “great concern” over the Bush administration’s sneaky attack on the Endangered Species Act. The change would allow federal agencies to green-light many projects with no independent review of impact on endangered species — which, uh, kind of defeats the purpose. Boxer […]
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Why McCain hates renewables but pretends he loves them
McCain has been an opponent of renewable energy all his political life. Why? He is a conservative — and that is what conservatives do. The GOP’s ultra-rich big energy donors don’t like competition and dole out millions to get their way. He has long been uncomfortable around cutting edge technology — witness his Internet illiteracy. […]
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Australia continues to deal with epic drought
Longstanding drought has wreaked havoc across Australia, drying up lakes into shallow, acidic puddles and threatening drinking-water supplies. Unable to coax rain from the sky, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has fast-tracked a plan to buy back water entitlements from the heaviest irrigators in the Murray-Darling basin, an agricultural stronghold which produces all of the country’s […]
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Oil wealth contains the ‘seeds of its own destruction’
Originally posted to the NDN blog. The reappearance of a belligerent Russia on the world stage, buoyed by high oil prices and newfound wealth, would appear to signal a new era in global politics. For anyone still clinging to the idea of the unipolar moment, the spectacle of Nicholas Sarkozy brokering a deal between Russia […]
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The Twinkie lobby
Photo: Nathan Pruzaniec I’ve been pondering writing something about this story in Politico, in which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he’s fine with any energy bill that doesn’t "raise taxes," which is Republicanese for revoking some of the billions in tax breaks and subsidies U.S. taxpayers provide oil companies. McConnell is well aware that […]
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Prince Charles sparked controversy when he expressed doubt in GM crops
The British royal family is no stranger to controversy and media attention, but Prince Charles caused a new kind of worldwide media flurry on Tuesday when he sat down for an exclusive interview with the Telegraph (U.K.). This time around, though, it seems unlikely the media story will be covered by the British tabloids since […]
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Chevy Volt gets prettied up, almost ready for testing
The design phase of the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt is “essentially finished,” General Motors declared Thursday. The new design is more aerodynamic than the concept Volt unveiled in Jan. 2007, allowing the car to travel solely on battery power for at least 40 miles, according to GM. The automaker hopes to have a few prototypes […]
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Demand destruction is driving prices down, but is that a good thing?
As Joe says, Americans are driving less: "Americans drove 53.2 billion fewer miles November through June than they did over the same eight-month period a year ago…" Consequently, demand for oil is down to a five-year low, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Not hard to figure out what’s going on here — as Matt […]
