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Bhopal activists detained after protest at Prime Minister’s house

Activists and victims of the world’s worst industrial accident in Bhopal, India, in 1984 were detained by police this week after protesting in front of the Indian Prime Minister’s house. The Bhopal protesters, including many children, have been in Delhi for over a month waiting for an audience with the PM after walking there from […]

Tropical insects under grave threat from climate change, study says

Tropical insects and other temperature-dependent critters that make their home in the tropics could be in grave danger from climate change, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As opposed to species at the world’s poles that frequently encounter a wide range of temperatures, tropical insects and […]

Direct mailers from Obama campaign hail ‘clean Kentucky coal’

Obama for clean Kentucky coal Hillary Clinton has been pilloried for pandering to working class voters with her gas-tax holiday proposal. But she’s not the only one telling working-class voters what they want to hear. “Barack Obama believes in clean Kentucky coal.” So reads a direct mailer being distributed in Kentucky ahead of the state’s […]

Greenpeace report calls carbon capture and sequestration ‘false hope’

On Monday, Greenpeace released a new report called "False Hope: Why carbon capture and storage won’t save the climate." Here are the conclusions, as summarized by Ken Ward Jr.: • Adequate technology is not expected to be commercially available until 2030, while leading climate experts say carbon dioxide emissions need to level off by 2015 […]

Obama energy adviser Jason Grumet talks climate, coal, and transportation policy

As executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan group of 20 energy experts created in 2002, Jason Grumet has come in for some flack from environmentalists. NCEP’s influential 2004 energy report called for several measures anathema to greens, including a "safety valve" that would set an upper limit on the price […]

Clinton vows to take down OPEC

Now Clinton’s going to dissolve OPEC: “We’re going to go right at OPEC,” she said. “They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how much oil they’re going to produce and what price […]

Glenn Hurowitz’s analysis of Democratic election strategy

Hurowitz has written a book that analyzes how the Democrats managed to lose control of Congress for 12 whole years and let Bush get into and hold his office for the last eight. He sums up the problem in a single word: Courage. What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot? Courage can be hard to define, but you know it when you see it. For example, here is an old YouTube video where some guy off camera tells Cheney to GFY.

Sometimes there is a fine line between courage and stupidity. This guy, who may now be sitting in Guantanamo for all I know, sure had balls. Base jumpers and NASCAR drivers are on the wrong side of that line, because courage only counts when an individual takes a personal risk for others. We instinctively admire courageous leaders. If they are also smart leaders, they can impart a serious competitive advantage.

Hurowitz's book Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party is about 270 pages long but has only six chapters. Four of those chapters juxtapose four politicians: the late Paul Wellstone, Bill Clinton (gutless wonder), Tom Daschle (circumstantial coward), and Nancy Pelosi.

Is there no end to it?

First McCain panders to middle-class drivers, now he’s pandering to Ron Steenblick!

Clinton sings the faux-populist, anti-intellectual Manichean blues

I must say I’m surprised and gratified at the amount of coverage the gas-tax holiday is getting. It appears to be blowing up in Clinton’s face, which is exactly what would happen in a Good and Just world. Earlier this week, asked about the fact that not a single policy expert or economist thinks the […]

Eco-friendly outdoor-clothing company goes under

Last year, Eric Brody of outdoor-apparel company Nau excitedly chatted with Grist readers about his new enterprise and its ambitious sustainability plans. This week, the company announced that it’s closing its doors: “Just as we could not have predicted the sudden groundswell of environmental consciousness that blossomed at the time we launched our business, we […]