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EPA releases unconvincing justification for denying California waiver

For the long wait that preceded it, the U.S. EPA’s just-released justification for disallowing California to regulate vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions is rather anticlimactic. The 48-page document argues that California lacks the “compelling and extraordinary conditions” required for special regulatory permission, because the rest of the nation is also affected by climate change. Critics of the […]

When the world gives you an extra day, use it to celebrate amphibian conservation

Leaping long-toed salamanders, Batman! We need your help to save the nearly 2,000 amphibian species that are currently threatened with extinction. That’s one-third of all known species of frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and caecilians across the globe. And the status of the other two-thirds ain’t looking so hot either. Small wonder, too, what with an […]

Archer Daniels Midland will squeeze out competition, says Fortune

Record corn prices aren’t just squeezing consumers. They’re also hurting the ethanol industry — yes, the very folks whose ravenous appetite for corn drove up prices in the first place. From Fortune Magazine: Cargill announces it’s scrapping plans for a $200 million ethanol plant near Topeka, Kan. A judge approves the bankruptcy sale of an […]

A celebration of hot air on Broadway

No, you couldn't make this one up.

It's a meeting, starting Sunday, of hundreds of "scientists" and propagandists, convening to denounce the proposition that global warming is real.

It's like a gathering of the Flat Earth Society. Or, since this meeting literally is taking place on Broadway, it recalls the great Preston Jones play, The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia, which did run briefly on Broadway.

Kodak, Wal-Mart partner on photo kiosk recycling

Wal-Mart continues on the “Seriously? They’re still doing good stuff?” path with a new partnership with Kodak that will bring recycling to those handy in-store photo kiosks. The printer ribbon, spools, and cartridges recycled annually by the program will weigh about as much as six commercial planes. Which is, even by Wal-Mart standards, big.

California sues Forest Service over road building, drilling plans

California sued the U.S. Forest Service this week, claiming that it violated federal environmental laws and ignored state policies prohibiting road building in roadless areas of national forests. At stake are over 500,000 acres in four national forests in the state that the Bush administration plans to open up to road building, as well as […]

VP hopeful Pawlenty fails energy/climate conservative litmus test

Just in case you thought conservatives might be warming up to climate action and clean energy with the impending nomination of John McCain, uber-conservative columnist Bob Novak explains otherwise in a column titled "How Not to Run for Vice President."

As a nonconservative, I know I can't do justice to Novak's "logic" by summarizing it, and I suspect many readers would think I was taking his argument out of context, since it seems so ... well ... judge for yourself. I'll just reprint most of it:

British PM prods retailers to reduce plastic-bag use, threatens fee

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to propose rules within the next year aimed at reducing the ubiquity of single-use plastic bags in the United Kingdom. About 13 billion plastic bags are given out free to U.K. shoppers every year and many are only used once before getting thrown out; plastic bags can take […]

Carl Pope talks market failures with energy execs at Houston energy conference

Today's second panel -- Carl's, on "conservation and the environment" -- opened with remarks from Houston Mayor Bill White. Despite my earlier comments about the road-crazy Bayou City, Mayor White laid out some items from what appears to be a truly progressive energy agenda for Houston, including making it an international leader in green buildings.

Some of his more interesting comments came when White told the story of being one of the staffers that helped write the Energy Policy & Conservation Act of 1975, the original fuel economy law. He spoke of the doubling in fuel economy occasioned by the law, but then -- in a story I'd never heard -- spoke of trying to incorporate pickups and the forebears of today's gas-guzzling SUVs into the law. Unfortunately, this provision was "hijacked," as he put it, and became an exemption for so-called "work trucks," even when they did nothing more than ferry suburban hausfraus around. Thankfully last year's energy bill finally closed this disastrous SUV loophole.

White noted that he himself drives a car that gets 49 miles per gallon and while he's happy about the big boost in CAFE, we "can do, shoulda done, and will do better." He agreed that doubling our current fuel economy is "not a stretch" and could be done with technology that exists today. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that he's switched over the vast majority of the city's fleet of passenger vehicles and public buses to hybrids and is now looking to the other vehicles like garbage trucks.

Big Energy promotes Big Energy at Houston energy conference

Today's first panel focused on "supply-side solutions" and featured quite a line-up:

• Dana Flanders, President, Chevron Technology Ventures
• James Hackett, Chairman, President, and CEO, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation
• Thad Hill, Executive Vice President and President, NRG Texas
• Robert Kelly, Founding Director, DKRW Energy LLC
• Aubrey McClendon, Chairman of the Board, CEO and Director, Chesapeake Energy Corporation

This being a veritable who's who of the old energy economy, I was interested to see what they would say when among friends, as it were.

While it started out positive, with Chevron's Flanders citing efficiency ("a barrel saved is a barrel found") as the most promising new technology, things went downhill quickly as the discussion turned to the promise of oil shale and other unconventional fossil fuels like tar sands and liquid coal.

For his part, NRG's Hill repeated the talking points the nuclear industry is aggressively pushing these days. He referred to the nuclear waste issue as "not that big of a problem" and cited politics as the only real obstacle. Somehow I think the people of Nevada might disagree. And despite shockingly serious recent incidents in Japan and here in the U.S. at the Davis Besse facility in Ohio, Hall claims that nukes have had a "phenomenal safety record."

The most interesting -- and perhaps telling -- comments came from the head of Anadarko, one of the biggest oil exploration companies in the world. After some platitudes around environmentalism in regards to more drilling, particularly in the Arctic Refuge, he went on the attack.