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A little bit of this, a smidge of that

The ol’ browser’s getting a little clogged up. Time to stop thinkin’ and start linkin’! Yee-haw. —– Eco-friendly bombs! A couple of crack economists at Environmental Defense Fund synthesized the results of several different economic models projecting the impact of cap-and-trade legislation. Their conclusion? A business-as-usual approach, continuing with today’s policies, puts the U.S. economy […]

GM considers selling Hummer brand

General Motors is “undertaking a strategic review” of its iconic Hummer brand, CEO Rick Wagoner said Tuesday, and is “considering all options … from a complete revamp of the product lineup to partial or complete sale of the brand.” As tempting as the sale of a widely vilified symbol of gas-guzzling excess sounds, analysts are […]

Listen to NPR today for a conversation about green-collar jobs

The drumbeat of interest in "green-collar jobs" just gets louder. Today at 4 p.m. EDT, I’ll be on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Here on Earth” call-in show, along with Keith Schneider from the Apollo Alliance. The show is an hour long, and you can listen live or later here.

Carbon pricing is about tweaking the little, everyday decisions we make

I’d like to add one quick addendum to my previous post on cap-and-trade. When we consider the extent to which we need to reduce our emissions in the abstract, it can appear quite daunting. This is especially the case when we look at the needed reductions and then focus on how big a role coal […]

Discovery’s new green network launches tomorrow

Do not adjust your television set. What you are seeing — the rebranding of Discovery Home Channel as Planet Green — is perfectly normal. Actually, it’s better than normal; it’s making “green” normal. Beginning at 6 p.m. EDT tomorrow, some 50 million homes will be introduced to 250 hours of original green lifestyle programming as […]

Fear of the day

What if the anticipation of carbon legislation has driven more investment away from coal than actual carbon legislation will?

Climate bills would save world’s forests

• More money for forests and wildlife conservation than has ever been available in history
• The regrowth of many of the world's forests
• Massive quantities of greenhouse gases sucked out of the air

Those are a few of the benefits of the newest versions of the climate legislation now being considered in the House and Senate. Both the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill [PDF] and Rep. Ed Markey's latest proposal [PDF] include massive financing for forest and land conservation that could save these planetary lungs.

Both bills are based on a fundamental recognition that trees suck up vast quantities of carbon dioxide and convert it into oxygen -- and that standing pristine forests and grasslands (especially tropical forests) are a tremendous storehouse of carbon that we've got to keep safely locked up in forests. Indeed, deforestation for agriculture and logging is already driving 20 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions and is the biggest single source in the developing world.

And so these bills would unleash unprecedented levels of financing to preserve great natural reserves from Big Ag, Big Timber, and land-hungry peasants.

But the ways in which they do it -- and the overall scope of the bills -- could spell very different fates for the forests and grasslands they're meant to save. The Lieberman-Warner bill would allow polluters to offset their own pollution with more than 25 percent offsets through domestic and international forest, grassland, and agricultural conservation, reforestation, and afforestation -- amounting to billions of dollars a year in financing opportunities. Polluters are likely to jump at these forestry offset opportunities: Because of the relatively low price of land and the immense quantities of carbon stored in the forests, conserving forests is generally a lot cheaper than cleaning up industrial pollution.

The Markey bill takes a different approach. In the past, there's been some skepticism that offsets from forestry could be accurately tracked. In the words of a senior adviser to Markey's global warming committee, "You can't plug a meter into a tree to see how much carbon was sucked in that day." There were also concerns in the past that it would be hard to accurately track whether a forest that was "saved" would actually have been cut down in the absence of financing or conservation action.

NASA internal investigation finds press-office climate distortion

An investigation by NASA’s inspector general has found that the agency’s press office repeatedly distorted climate-change research findings and limited its scientists’ access to the media between 2004 and 2006. NASA scientist James Hansen first spoke out about the press-office distortion to major news outlets two years ago, leading the agency to eventually alter its […]

Ten entrepreneurial lessons to get your green biz going

Is it your career ambition to start your own green business or nonprofit endeavor? Join the club, my friends. Among recent college graduates and late-Boomer career-changers, “starting my own enterprise” is high on the list of preferred careers. And why not? When I turn on NPR in the morning, I’m often greeted by an ad […]

Boxer and friends rally in park for climate bill

  Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) hosted a press conference in a park outside the Capitol this afternoon to rally support for the Climate Security Act. Standing on a podium alongside other senators as well as reps from several green groups, religious organizations, labor unions, and businesses, Boxer called the bill “long […]