Latest Articles

Oil industry barely hangs on, thanks to brave Republican defense of subsidies

You may recall that a couple of months ago, Republicans in the Senate threatened a filibuster to defend about $13 billion in oil company subsidies. In other news, Exxon Mobil just posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company in history — $40.6 billion. It also set a record for the largest ever quarterly […]

Green groups sue over delay in polar-bear endangered-species decision

Environmental and native groups have sued — as they are wont to do — in an attempt to force the Interior Department to rethink its decision to sell oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, which is prime polar bear habitat. The lease sale by the department’s Minerals Management Service is scheduled to go […]

Kansas Republicans against global warming

A prominent Republican Kansas legislator comes out in support of Sebelius and against his ideological brethren on the subject of Kansas coal plants: When every Academy of Science in every developed, industrialized nation agrees, and when the overwhelming number of scientists throughout the world state man-made global warming is a reality, then I would ask […]

Lockheed Martin signs exclusive contract with Eestor for energy storage units

Oh! I forgot to pass on some interesting news that came my way recently. Defense mega-contractor Lockheed Martin has signed a contract with mysterious ultracapacitor company Eestor to use its energy storage devices in "military and homeland security applications." This seem huge. The buzz around Eestor — more here — has been intense, and the […]

China announces plans to modify weather for Olympics

The Olympic stadium in Beijing, China, will be dry during the opening ceremony, officials said, but not because the structure has a roof (it doesn’t). Instead, Chinese meteorologists claim they can stop rain from falling over the stadium, despite the fact that the games will take place during the monsoon season this August. The process […]

Environmental Capital

In case you didn’t know: The Wall Street Journal has started an environmental blog called Environmental Capital. It’s quite good. See, for instance, this post on the climate talks going on in Hawaii, and the centrality of global trade considerations thereto.

Hawaii climate conference ends, scant progress made

The U.S.-led climate talks in Honolulu, Hawaii, ended yesterday without much fanfare and without much progress achieved. By most accounts, it was a closed-door, bureaucratic nothing-fest wherein delegates from the 17 biggest-polluting countries spoke about the need to act, but no one actually did. The United States finally agreed to take part in forming climate-change […]

Focus the Nation events aim for interactivity, accountability

This week, college campuses across the country held events for Focus the Nation, a major education and action campaign around climate change. To see what it was all about, I headed to Seattle’s University of Washington campus to find out if the students behind Focus the Nation could teach me a thing or two. The […]

Obama parries ABEC

Obama gets buttonholed by a planted ABEC coal shill: Nothing he says here is particularly objectionable. The priority on reducing CO2 emissions is welcome. It is true that if we can figure out a way to cost-effectively sequester coal emissions, it will bring some benefit. More important, though, is what’s not said. He says we […]

Tonight’s climate-less Democratic debate: Brought to you on behalf of ABEC

I looked through the transcript, and as far as I can tell there wasn’t a single question about climate change in tonight’s Democratic debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. This is the fourth CNN debate sponsored by coal front group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC). Not one of the four has contained a […]