Latest Articles

Peer-reviewed study finds that right-wing think tanks have stymied environmental progress

To file under “academic demonstration of what we already knew,” here’s an abstract from a new paper in the journal Environmental Politics: Environmental scepticism denies the seriousness of environmental problems, and self-professed “sceptics” claim to be unbiased analysts combating “junk science.” This study quantitatively analyses 141 English-language environmentally sceptical books published between 1972 and 2005. […]

E.U. has trash problem; Hamburg has trash solution

The European Union is running out of landfill space and faces a looming trash problem. All member nations have been directed to reduce landfill-bound trash 35 percent of 1995 levels by 2020, but many nations have slim chances of meeting that target; Italy, Spain, Greece, and Britain currently send more than 60 percent of their […]

NPS considers returning half of Badlands National Park to Oglala Sioux

The National Park Service is considering returning the southern half of Badlands National Park in South Dakota to the Oglala Sioux tribe. Under the proposal, the northern half would remain a national park, but the 133,000-acre southern half would be returned to the tribe. The land was seized from the Oglala Sioux by the military […]

The right comparison between Obama and McCain on climate/energy

In the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Power summarizes the difference between Obama and McCain on energy and environmental policies this way: Sen. Obama is pushing a bigger government role in fostering the development of technologies to reduce emissions and alternatives to fossil fuels. Sen. McCain, meanwhile, argues for a more hands-off approach, saying "unintended consequences" […]

High oil prices affecting consumer goods, nearly everything else too

Oil prices surged $11 on Friday, hitting a new record high of $138.54 a barrel. Over the weekend the average price of regular unleaded gasoline around the U.S. also surged to new high of $4 a gallon. Unsurprisingly, folks in rural areas are taking the largest hit to their incomes from gas prices due to […]

Act now with clean energy or face 6 degrees C warming; cost is not high; media blows story

When the normally conservative International Energy Agency agrees with both the middle of the road IPCC and more ... progressive voices like mine, it should be time for the world to get very serious, very fast on the clean energy transition. But when the media blows the story, the public and policymakers may miss the key messages of the stunning new IEA report, "Energy Technology Perspectives, 2008" (executive summary here).

You may not have paid much attention to this new report once you saw the media's favorite headline for it: "$45 trillion needed to combat warming." That would be too bad, because the real news from the global energy agency is

1. Failing to act very quickly to transform the planet's energy system puts us on a path to catastrophic outcomes.
2. The investment required is "an average of some 1.1 percent of global GDP each year from now until 2050. This expenditure reflects a re-direction of economic activity and employment, and not necessarily a reduction of GDP." In fact, this investment partly pays for itself in reduced energy costs alone (not even counting the pollution reduction benefits)!
3. The world is on the brink of a renewables (and efficiency) revolution. Click figure to enlarge:

Five nations agree to think about ending oil subsidies

The day after markets registered the highest single-day rise in crude oil prices ever, the United States and Asia's four largest economies (Japan, China, India and South Korea), meeting in Aomori, Japan in advance of the G8 Energy Ministers summit, have formed a sort of Petro-holics non-Anonymous club, calling for an end to oil subsidies in their countries.

Consumer subsidies (subsidized fuel prices), that is, not producer subsidies.

OK, what they actually agreed upon was "the need" to remove fuel-price subsidies. Eventually.

According to a report by Agence France-Presse, the five nations announced in a joint statement:

"We recognize that, moving forward, phased and gradual withdrawal of price subsidies for conventional energies is desirable. Undistorted and market-based energy pricing" would help "enhance energy efficiency and increase investment in alternative sources of energy." They said that subsidies "should be replaced wherever possible by better targeted policies for intended beneficiaries. Such a move "could also lead to reduction in the government cost and greater integration of the domestic and global energy economies."

McCain criticized during Florida trip for opposing funding for Everglades restoration

Visiting the Everglades has become de rigueur for presidential candidates hoping to shore up environmental cred in Florida, the nation’s most populous swing state. But Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s trip to the wetlands on Friday seemed to generate only bad publicity. Last year McCain opposed legislation that included funding for Everglades restoration and urged […]

Anti-immigrant groups hide agenda behind environmental concerns

Via Feministing, it appears a group of anti-immigration organizations are trying to cloak their agenda in environmental concerns. They took out this half-page ad in The New York Times last week (click for larger version): Alien Nation Here’s the text: Americans spend a lot of time in their cars. Not because they want to. But […]

A carbon policy is likely to be less devastating than nature, or oil markets

Reihan responds. Let me just say a few more things. First, I described his characterization of carbon pricing as “insane” based on this: What we need is a $100 billion prize or set of prizes to the person or firm or non-profit entity that can devise a cost-effective means of scrubbing the atmosphere of carbon […]