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Obama lays out an energy vision that’s economics and security first

I just read the energy speech Obama gave on Tuesday in Nevada. I’d call it a TKO if I didn’t sound so unconvincing using boxing metaphors. Watch what he leads with: "A green, renewable energy economy isn’t some pie-in-the-sky, far-off future, it is now." This is what the campaign, correctly in my judgment, has decided […]

Supreme Court slashes Exxon’s punitive damages for Valdez oil spill

ExxonMobil is off the hook for billions in punitive damages related to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. In 1994, the oil giant was ordered to pay $5 billion in punitive damages. In 2006, that amount was cut to $2.5 billion. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court slashed the amount once again, to $507.5 million. By […]

BP, Shell, Airbus, and other multinationals call for 50 percent emission cuts by 2050

The CEOs of 100 large multinational corporations -- including companies from carbon-intense industries -- have signed a World Economic Forum statement [PDF] that calls on the G8 to create a strategy to cut global greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050. The G8 will be meeting in Japan next month, and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda will be pushing hard for an agreement on climate change.

Notable signatories to the statement: Airbus, British Airways, BP, Duke Energy, DuPont, Electricite de France, Entergy, E.ON, Michelin, Petrobras, Renault, Rolls-Royce, and Shell.

Are pigs flying? Not quite.

Umbra on short-haul flights

Dear Umbra, I work in the touring music business, based in the U.K. but touring worldwide. I have noticed recently that the record companies are booking cheap flights for short distances, e.g., London-Manchester, about 200 miles. Over such short distances, there is no saving in time, due to travel to and from airport, checking in, […]

Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith touts work with Obama in new campaign ad

Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon is touting his work with Barack Obama to improve automobile fuel efficiency and his “bipartisan leadership for energy independence” in a new television ad. Smith, the sole GOP senator on the West Coast, is fighting to maintain his seat this year in what’s expected to be a tightly contested […]

Climate change may force California endemic plants to migrate or die

Climate change is expected to significantly affect California’s endemic plants over the next century as temperatures rise and rainfall patterns change, according to a new study published in the journal PLoS One. Up to two-thirds of the state’s unique plants could be wiped out in their current ranges by century’s end and will have to […]

RNC claims Obama contradicts himself on nuclear power

Perhaps in response to Barack Obama’s criticism of McCain on nuclear power yesterday, the Republican National Committee is circulating a research piece claiming the Democratic candidate has flip-flopped on the issue, citing quotes and videos of Obama. The quotes: From the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C., in July 2007: “I actually think that we […]

Talking with voters in Portland about the environment and the election

 

This is part of a series of dispatches from Melinda Henneberger, who's talking to voters around the U.S. about their views on the environment and the election.

Portland, Ore. -- Oh, the indignity of tooling around environmentally aware Portland in a big-dog SUV, in between conversations about the environment. Even the guy at the rental-car counter was apologetic: "I know," he said, when I gulped at the news that my economy car had been super-sized. "No one wants them, but we have to give them to somebody."

Just as gay people grow up and move to San Francisco or New York, green people grow up and move here. Years before I began sorting bottles and cans on the other coast, my buddy who is a Kansan-turned-Oregonian was struggling to convey just how bad her new boss really was: "Melinda," she finally told me, "he does not even recycle."

My friend's next-door neighbors are transplanted Texans, Linda d'Onofrio and Andrew Migliore, who as d'Onofrio says "came here for local produce and a forward way of thinking." Even so, it took them a while to settle in with their chosen tribe: "I didn't grow up around political correctness, and we had a hard time the first couple of years," says d'Onofrio. "We'd say tasteless things about everybody's race, religion, animals; we'd make kitty taco jokes" -- not widely appreciated by "people who will stop you on the street and tell you what they think of your Hummer." Now, though, this is home, and the whole moment is more subdued: "My sister's a true Communist who goes around the world teaching micro-banking, my brother's a true Fascist with his boots in the corner, and we used to have the best conversations, but all the fun has been sucked out of that. The conversation has stopped because it's not funny anymore; you can't make jokes about Abu Ghraib and melting ice caps."

Offshore drilling has an ‘insignificant’ effect on oil prices

I am glad that so many in the energy debate have picked up on one of the two messages from my previous post (see "EIA to McCain: Drop offshore [drilling]").

But in listening to the radio and TV debates, I realize that some people have the impression that U.S. Energy Information Administration said offshore drilling might eventually lower oil prices. It did not. It found that allowing offshore drilling would have no significant effect on prices as far out into the future as the analysis projected.

Eco-friendly outdoor outfitter resurrected

Last month, we were sad to learn that stylish, sustainable outdoorsy-fashion darling Nau was biting the dust. Turns out that goodbye for Nau was a good buy for Horny Toad Activewear, a Santa Barbara-based maker of “lifestyle apparel” that recently acquired the company. (Hee hee, they said horny!) Mark Galbraith, head of product design for […]