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Denver hopes to reduce car emissions by encouraging better driving

The city of Denver has unveiled a “Driving Change” pilot program designed to reduce vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions by encouraging drivers to ease off the lead foot. Starting in May, 400 public and private Denver vehicles, including that of Mayor John Hickenlooper, will have a device installed to monitor time spent braking, idling, accelerating, and speeding. […]

ECO:nomics: Quick observations

The programs today are stacked up, one after another, 30 min. apiece. As a result, there’s not much opportunity to blog about them — I’m struggling just to take notes. Two quick observations: I expected, coming to this, that it would be an opportunity for CEOs to robotically repeat talking points programmed into their heads […]

Conventional milk contains toxics, says the USDA

The Organic Center acts as a kind of shadow USDA, digesting the latest peer-reviewed research on organic food, translating it into English, and issuing summary reports. Consumers won’t want to miss the center’s newest one on pesticide residues [PDF]. It contains one of those handy guides on which conventional fruits and veggies convey the most […]

A post-petroleum American dream

"This craziness is not sustainable," concludes The New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert, and he's talking about the economy, not the environment. He continues:

Without an educated and empowered work force, without sustained investment in the infrastructure and technologies that foster long-term employment, and without a system of taxation that can actually pay for the services provided by government, the American dream as we know it will expire.

And without petroleum. Oil is shooting over $100 per barrel, caused ultimately by a looming decline in global supply, and exacerbated by rising demand in China and India, foolish policies such as the occupation of Iraq, and repressive regimes such as in Nigeria. And if we are serious about reducing carbon emissions to near zero in order to avert climate catastrophe, we must scale back our use of petroleum to near zero.

While we're learning to live without petroleum, we need to rebuild the workforce, infrastructure, technologies, and tax system, as Herbert suggests. I will argue in this post that we can accomplish all of these goals by replacing internal combustion engines with electric motors, using other energy sources for other petroleum uses, and perhaps most importantly, by changing the arrangement of the buildings, production, and people in our society in order to eliminate the need for so much petroleum.

In order to understand how to accomplish all of this, we need to know how petroleum is used, so let's look at some numbers!

Drive a stake into winter’s cold heart with a creamy, dreamy noodle dish

Goodbye winter, hello primavera. Photo: iStockphoto I love March. Why? Because I hate winter. I hate shoveling, I hate walking on ice, and I especially hate always having to look at the ground when I’m walking, instead of at all the people and things around me. With the exception of cross-country skiing and being able […]

Misleading cotton ads banned in U.K.

Poster and magazine ads by the U.S. cotton industry have been banned in Britain. The U.K. Advertising Standards Authority can put the kibosh on advertising deemed to be greenwashing, and regulators took issue with the cotton ads’ claim that the crop is “soft, sensual, and sustainable.” The ad authority pointed out that cotton is a […]

Projected CO2 emissions dwarf previous expectations

This recent paper on the likely path of China's CO2 emissions is striking in that the projections are much greater than once thought. They are so large that they dwarf any reductions by all other nations who have signed the Kyoto Protocol. On top of this is the fact that China doesn't have all that much non-fossil fuel energy potential and in fact is highly dependent on coal.

The questions that need to be asked are these:

1. Is it possible for China to actually decrease absolute emissions? If so, how, and how much will it cost? Who will pay for it?
2. If China can't reduce absolute emissions, how much more do all the rest of us need to decrease our emissions to offset China's increase? Is this feasible? Within what time frame? And again, how, and how much will it cost?

If we can't answer these questions, we really are in big trouble.

World’s pollutingest countries to meet for climate talks in Japan

The world’s 20 biggest-polluting countries will meet in Japan on Friday for a three-day climate conference designed as a run-up to the July G8 meeting where current G8 leader Japan wants to put climate at the top of the agenda. Japan has expressed support for cutting G8-country emissions by 50 percent from 1990 levels by […]

World’s tiger population unwell, WWF says

Photo: Paul Buxton The world’s tiger population is doing poorly and may have been halved in the last 25 years, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The group estimates that the global tiger population has plummeted to about 3,500 today from as many as 7,500 in 1982. Habitat destruction and poaching to feed the thriving […]

ECO:nomics: Immelt miscellania

Here are some bits and pieces from the Immelt keynote that didn’t fit into my other post: — GE CEO Jeff Immelt, center, flanked by Kimberly Strassel and Alan Murray of The Wall Street Journal. Photos: Genesis Photos After Immelt’s session, I randomly overheard Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, say, "that’s as unplugged as […]