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Advice for navigating the wild world of products with eco-claims

Laundry detergent made from flowers! Cars that don’t pollute! Potato chips fried in organic oils! These days, everything seems to be marketed with an eco-spin — even products that are notoriously bad for people and the planet. So are companies truly seeing the green light, or are they just greenwashing? Photo: iStockphoto If green is […]

An account of a House hearing on auctioning permits under cap-and-trade

Last Wednesday, the House Global Warming Committee held a hearing on "auctions and revenue recycling in cap and trade," which took a close look at the advantages of auctioning (rather than giving away) pollution permits under a cap and trade system, and what might be done with the revenue. I didn’t manage to watch the […]

Sen. Ted Kennedy endorses Obama

Influential Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), whose family has long been friendly with the Clintons, has nonetheless endorsed Barack Obama for president. Included among Ted’s reasons: “With Barack Obama … we will make the United States the great leader and not the great roadblock in the fateful fight against global warming.” Kennedy is the brother of […]

White House SOTU energy BS preview

Right on time, here’s the White House’s "State of the Union 2008" statement on "Increasing Our Energy Security And Confronting Climate Change." It more or less confirms everything I said here. It touts the energy bill and the Major Economies Meetings, and trumpets the wonders of clean coal, nuclear power, and sweetheart neoliberal trade deals.

Let cows eat vaccines along with distillers grains

In December, a study came out suggesting a link between distillers grains — a waste product of the corn-ethanol process — and a spike in cases of beef tainted with the deadly E. coli 0157 virus. You see, the government-mandated ethanol boom has dramatically pushed up corn prices. To cut costs, feedlot operators have been […]

The health externalities of coal

A while back I commented on a post over at Common Tragedies, an excellent environmental economics blog of recent vintage. As is my inimitable style, my comments were hastily written and full of wild generalizations. One had to do with the health externalities of coal burning, which I alleged were extensive. Recently, an email to […]

Navy resumes sonar training off California coast

As a legal battle rages on over the U.S. Navy’s use of whale-addling sonar, the military maritimers have resumed sonar training off the California coast.

Mike Tidwell speaks out in the WaPo against coal

Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, regularly has me on his Earthbeat radio show, so I'm returning the favor with this great letter to the editor he had in the Washington Post yesterday:

Fact: Virginia gets less than 1 percent of its electricity from "green" sources such as the wind or the sun. Fact: Virginia ranks 38th among U.S. states in energy efficiency. Fact: Climate change is real, and fossil fuel substitutes are needed, according to President Bush's State of the Union address last year. So how would Dominion Virginia Power respond to these facts?

• Savagely blow up entire mountains in southwest Virginia.
• Feed the resulting exposed coal to a proposed power plant that is unnecessary and would cost ratepayers at least $1.8 billion.
• Create lots more greenhouse gases in the process.
• Doom the good people of southwest Virginia to living with a brutal extraction industry that has no future.

Whew! Talk about getting everything wrong.

And yet Gov. Tim Kaine supports the plan:

Umbra on paper plates

Dear Umbra, Maybe you can help settle this dispute between my husband and me. He likes to use paper plates for quick/short meals like toast in the morning, cheese and crackers in the evening, etc. He claims that he’s saving energy by not having to wash a dish. (We have a new energy-efficient dishwasher and […]

California mulls nation’s first feebate bill

Feebates are one of the most promising strategies for lowering vehicle fleet emissions. This week, the California Assembly will vote on the nation’s first feebate bill, the California Clean Car Discount Act. It would levy a fee of up to $2,500 on gas guzzlers, with commensurate rebates for fuel efficient cars. The L.A. Times has […]