Latest Articles

Increased CO2 in the atmosphere exacerbates the effects of air pollution

The primary reason EPA head Stephen Johnson rejected California’s waiver request is that the state did not face "extraordinary and compelling conditions" as defined under the Clean Air Act. The idea is that CO2 affects the entire atmosphere equally, so California didn’t face any particular dangers from it. Turns out, not only is that shoddy […]

Knut to star in Hollywood flick

This 245-lb. fluffball has stolen the spotlight since day one, but Knut may soon make a big-screen debut as the star of an upcoming animated feature. The Berlin Zoo has been approached with a $5 million movie deal for the year-old polar bear. (I assume that’ll be paid out in fish and other bear-friendly treats?) […]

Canada should consider adopting carbon tax, says panel

Canada should strongly consider adopting a carbon tax along with an emissions cap-and-trade system, a panel of experts advised the government today. The panel had been asked for advice on how Canada could meet its goal of reducing emissions by 45 to 65 percent of 2003 levels by 2050. Environment Minister John Baird put the […]

Can economic democracy make the global economy more sustainable?

Worried about more coal plants, carbon emissions from transportation, and a crumbling infrastructure? Evidence provided by several recent reports point to one of the least explored causes of these problems: globalization, that is, the transfer of manufacturing capacity from developed to developing countries, particularly China.

The mechanisms differ. The U.S. and Europe, which could manufacture using environmentally benign techniques, instead use old, polluting technologies that wreck China's environment and increase global carbon emissions. The 70,000 cargo ships that ply the seas moving all of the globalized goods emit more than twice as much carbon as all airline traffic. And because major corporations no longer feel tied to their local communities, they also no longer lobby governments for a world-class infrastructure.

Now, I recently proposed that it would be a good thing to manufacture locally (and Ryan Avent took me to task for saying so). But what I want to propose is not protectionism, but the idea that if local companies were employee-owned and -operated, the problems I describe in this post would go away -- as utopian as that may first sound.

But first to the NYT article, "China Grabs West's Smoke-Spewing Factories":

Yogurt CEO blazes green path

Check out Joel Makower on Gary Hirshberg, founder and head of Stonyfield Yogurt. Stonyfield was bought by French food conglomerate Danone last year, at which I point my kneejerk dirty hippie-ism kicked in and I assumed they’d sold out. Apparently not, though: All of which further empowered Hirshberg to pursue, and align, his dual missions […]

Umbra on Camelbaks

Dear Umbra, Recently, I’ve started to try to avoid plastics (especially plastic water bottles). For Christmas, my brother gave me a Camelbak-type water bottle. How safe is this? I assume it’s as bad as most plastic water bottles. Timothy Kearney Issaquah, Wash. Dearest Timothy, Gifting quandary alert. But does it suck? Photo: iStockphoto Not all […]

Decision on whether to list polar bears as a threatened species is delayed

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, expected to announce on Wednesday its decision about whether to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, has announced instead that it will miss that deadline. The agency said it hopes to make a recommendation to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne within the next month, after […]

Battery technology continues to improve

This is my hybrid bike charging at a 7-11 while I ate some lunch. I was hauling a heavy load and had been tormenting another cyclist who had been trying to close a 10-foot gap with me for a couple of miles on Sand Point Way. I took my batteries to their limit of 4.6 amp-hours, so I had to pull out of the dogfight to refuel with 14 miles on the odometer.

Yet-Ming Chiang (formerly a researcher at MIT) combined lithium ion technology with nanocarbon particles to invent the batteries that power my bike, saw, and drill. These batteries solved just enough technical problems to make the hybrid electric bicycle fully feasible, and will probably do so for the first plug-in hybrid cars.

Yi Cui (a researcher at Stanford) heads a team that has come up with an improvement on the A123 battery by combining lithium ion technology with silicon nanowires.

"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development [producing 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion batteries]."

Urban issue virtually absent from campaign; mayors speak up

Ed Glaeser asks the presidential candidates: "What about the cities?" Last month, Clyde Haberman wondered the same thing. It’s a good question. Every rural cornpone mom and pop in Iowa has had a candidate personally promise to put on their slippers on every morning, but what about the majority of Americans that live in urban […]

The Forest Guild on climate change

Here's a window into how foresters are looking at climate change: the Forest Guild is a national, nonprofit network of practicing foresters whose advice and efforts on behalf of their landowner clients has a big role to play in the health and future of privately owned forests. The Guild "promotes ecologically, economically, and socially responsible forestry as a means of sustaining the integrity of forest ecosystems" (and the welfare of those dependent on them).

So it's not a big surprise that the new edition of their publication, Forest Wisdom (large PDF), goes to some depth in exploring the challenges presented by climate change. It includes articles like "Recent Trends in US Private Forest Carbon" (of nine forest regions identified by the Forest Service, four are most important in terms of potential carbon gains and losses -- the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest/Lake states, and Pacific Northwest -- due to their high ratio of private ownership, high productivity, and intensity of management), and also a piece on carbon markets.

What caught my eye was the cover story by editor Fred Clark, "Forest Stewardship in a Changing World," the main issues of which he describes like this:

Forest practitioners will be on the frontlines in the effort to protect our forests and our environment from the effects triggered by changing climate. Guild members already possess many of the tools and skills that will be most needed ... [and] are well-suited for meeting both the new realities and expectations that society is rapidly placing on forests.

The "What's New" section of their site links to this edition of the publication, and lots of other interesting papers all delightfully full of forester-speak, but I wanted to (heavily) paraphrase here some of Fred's main points contained in the cover story: