Latest Articles

A roundup of news snippets

• Activists ask officials to halt the slaughter of Yellowstone bison. • Palazzo Las Vegas named largest green building in the world. • North Dakota and Montana may harbor up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil. • Clean diesels get ready for their closeup. • California authorities say aerial spraying against moth totally not why […]

Congress has a chance to protect sharks from finning

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the U.S. Court of Appeals' decision to throw out penalties against a fishing vessel carrying 64,695 pounds of shark fins in U.S. waters. Shipping a cargo full of shark fins without sharks is illegal in the United States, but the King Diamond II sailed through a loophole that allowed it to carry fins it had gathered from other ships.

Something good has come out of this: The decision has galvanized pressure to end the brutal practice of shark finning, which kills tens of millions of sharks annually, including many species already threatened by extinction.

Late on Wednesday, Delegate Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam) introduced the Shark Conservation Act of 2008, which will not only require all sharks to be landed with their fins, but also require any other sharks imported into the United States to have the same protections. It's an intermediate step in ensuring protection for sharks worldwide, but it's a vital step all the same.

As nonstop flights between the U.S. and E.U. increase, what will be the effect on climate?

Throw open the skies and get your passports ready! You may have heard by now that the proverbial jump across the pond is about to get much easier and, perhaps, cheaper. As of March 30, an “open skies” agreement between the United States and the European Union has gone into effect, opening up more possibilities […]

World Bank should get out of carbon-offset market, says report

Carbon-offset dealings by the World Bank have been criticized (and not for the first time) in a report released Thursday by the Institute for Policy Studies. In the past two years, the report charges, the bank has loaned $1.5 billion to fossil-fuel companies to make minor greenhouse-gas reductions. It then sells carbon credits for those […]

Entrepreneur Lyndon Rive wants to solarize your house for a low, low price

Would you pay $25,000 to $30,000 to put solar panels on your home? If you’re like most cash-strapped Americans, you’d balk at that five-figure expense, no matter how green you aspire to be. OK, what if you could do it for $1,000 or $2,000? SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive. SolarCity, based in sunny Silicon Valley, has […]

From Ruslana to Russia (With Love)

Ukraine’s world Meet Ruslana: the pre-shears Spears of Eastern Europe — and a vocal supporter of clean, green energy. We can’t quite make out all those lyrics, but we’re pretty sure her skimpy outfits are a commentary on the effects of global warming. Photo: Ruslana.ua Trying to rubber the right way Hard up for ways […]

Death, disease, and infection, thanks to our friend climate change

Daniel J. Weiss and Robin Pam of the Center for American Progress have a new article on the health impacts of global warming. As they explain, "Some of the most severe health effects linked to global warming include the following":

• More illness and death resulting from heat waves.
• Worsening air pollution causes more respiratory and cardiovascular disease.
• Vector-borne disease infections will rise.
• Changing food production and security may cause hunger.
• More severe and frequent wildfires will threaten more people.
• Flooding linked to rising sea levels will displace millions.

Already, "WHO now says that 150,000 deaths annually are attributable to the effects of climate change." And we've only warmed about 1.5 degrees F in the past century. We might warm 10 degrees F each century!

The time to act is now.

The automotive equivalent of high heels

Was looking for an electric vehicle and this came up. Seriously -- six batteries? And a suicide trunk?

Part of me kind of wants it.

Meat of the future may be grown in a lab

Problem: Large-scale meat production has environmental problems out the wazoo, but Homo sapiens shows much reluctance to giving up meat. Possible solution: Test-tube sausage! The awkwardly named In Vitro Meat Consortium just wrapped up the first-ever international conference focused on the potential for replacing slaughtered animals with grown-in-a-lab chicken nuggets and ground beef. In theory, […]

Fossil fuel moguls inflate reserve estimates to prevent efforts to move beyond their products

When I was young, Yankee Stadium had ~70,000 seats. It seldom sold out, and almost any kid could afford the cheap seats. Capacity was reduced to ~57,000 when the stadium was remodeled in the 1970s. Most games sell out now, and prices have gone up.

The new stadium, opening next year, will reduce seating further, to ~51,800. This intentional contraction is aimed at guaranteeing sellouts, increasing demand, allowing the owners, in pretty short order, to hike prices to double, triple, and more. The owners know that scarcity will fatten their wallets, even though it reduces the number of sales.

This is more than a bit distasteful, as it discriminates against the lower middle class. Nevertheless, it should be a great stadium and as long as the owner is footing the bill without public subsidies for the stadium itself, we may have little grounds for complaint.

The reason that I draw your attention to this practice is that fossil fuel moguls are intent on hoodwinking the entire planet with an analogous scheme.

The basic trick is this: fossil fuel reserves are overstated. Government "energy information" departments parrot industry. Partly because of this disinformation, the major efforts needed to develop energies "beyond fossil fuels" have not been made.