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McCain gets a zero from League of Conservation Voters; Obama and Clinton score better

Republican presidential candidate John McCain got a score of zero from the League of Conservation Voters for his voting record on environmental issues in Congress in 2007 — not because he voted against environmental protections, but because he simply didn’t show up to vote. McCain missed all 15 of the Senate votes that LCV counted […]

Another bad week for coal

The following post was first published on Passing Through, The Nation‘s guest blog, where I will be posting all month. Regular readers of Grist know that coal is the enemy of the human race. They may also know that coal is on the ropes and, despite its recent PR blitz, in something of panic. Let’s […]

Did we say ‘beyond petroleum’?

Never mind.

Change your lightbulbs …

… or else a giant Burmese python will eat your children!!1!

U.K. government says organic, free-range eggs have ‘significantly’ less salmonella

The case for sustainably grown food as a healthier and safer alternative to industrial dreck is gaining force. Here’s the latest, from Natural Choices UK: A recent [U.K.] government survey shows that organic laying hen farms have a significantly lower level of Salmonella. Salmonella is a bacterium that causes one of the commonest forms of […]

Gray wolves in northern Rocky Mountains lose endangered-species protections

Gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains will be removed from Endangered Species Act protections next month, the U.S. Fish and Wild Service announced Thursday. Management of the wolf population will be turned over to states on March 27. In states such as Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming where conservatives have shown rancor toward the predators […]

A lighthearted look at biosequestration

A semi-recent issue of High Country News carried a feature on the deep-rock carbon sequestration potential in the northwestern U.S.: it's maybe possible to inject CO2 captured from power plants into the basalt that underlies the region, producing inert calcium carbonate. If so, there's apparently enough basalt to capture centuries of the region's carbon emissions.

It's safe to say the research has its doubters. And carbon sequestration in general deserves the hairy eyeball: even if proven both ecologically and geologically viable and economically feasible, if it leads to the continued destruction of Appalachia and vast tracts of the West for coal, count me out.

Elsewhere, a study's findings added to the body of evidence that shellfish, like clams, oysters, and mussels (oh, and plankton, crustaceans, and corals), will start growing more slowly or dissolving altogether due to anthropogenic ocean acidification (from all of the excess CO2 we produce that goes into oceanic solution), which would dissolve their shells. Fewer/smaller/weaker shellfish would have economic effects, but also much greater impacts on marine life: they're an important food source for everything from fish to whales and birds.

My point? These critters fix carbon ("biosequestration") in their shells, so we could start losing an important piece of the ocean's ability to maintain its natural alkalinity, plus its tendency to sequester carbon, just when they're most needed.

My disinterested and clear-eyed proposal, then, is increased aquaculture of mollusks in bays, sounds, estuaries, sloughs, etc. We're already growing tens of millions of pounds of clams alone each year in the U.S., and unlike most other forms of aquaculture, you don't get the massive energetic losses like with the feeding of fish meal to top-of-the-food-chain finfish.

California continues to innovate on the climate front, but still gets smoked by perky B.C.

A national carbon tax in the U.S. appears increasingly unlikely, but all sorts of interesting experiments in emissions pricing are underway regionally.

First: the California Assembly this week votes on the California Clean Car Discount Act, a "feebate" system that imposes a direct charge on sales of gas guzzlers and uses the funds to reward buyers of fuel sippers. The way it works it pretty simple. If you buy a Chevy Tahoe, you'll have to pony up a $2,500 fee, which will then go straight to all the folks buying Honda Civics. Fees and rebates are determined on a sliding scale based on the fuel efficiency of the vehicle in question.

Although not quite a carbon tax, the system does establish clear price signals for energy efficiency, and such feebate systems are an improvement over CAFE. Unfortunately, some members of the assembly are still sitting on the fence:

A new way to waste energy

Last week, the NYT's Andy Revkin blogged about a federal laboratory that says it can take atmospheric carbon dioxide and turn it into gasoline:

One selling point with Los Alamos's "Green Freedom" concept, and similar ones, is that reusing the carbon atoms in the captured CO2 molecules as a fuel ingredient avoids the need to find huge repositories for the greenhouse gas.

The only problem with that exciting statement is that it is almost certainly not true, a point I will come back to.

Now the NYT has published an article on the subject that also overhypes the technology:

There is, however, a major caveat that explains why no one has built a carbon-dioxide-to-gasoline factory: it requires a great deal of energy.

To deal with that problem, the Los Alamos scientists say they have developed a number of innovations ...

Even with those improvements, providing the energy to produce gasoline on a commercial scale -- say, 750,000 gallons a day -- would require a dedicated power plant, preferably a nuclear one, the scientists say.

Nations launch new combined effort to save mountain gorillas

The three African nations that still have mountain gorilla populations have agreed to cooperate on a new plan to save the critically endangered primates. Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo hatched a 10-year program to enhance security in the parks and forests that the gorillas call home, as well as other measures. […]