Latest Articles

Industry groups lobby against climate legislation

If you want to get some sense of what Lieberman-Warner — or any piece of climate legislation — is in for when it hits the floor of the Senate, have a look at what its opponents are saying. Below are three letters to the Senate Environment Committee, from the Chamber of Commerce, the National Mining […]

Landmark energy bill stalls in the Senate

Today, Senate Republicans blocked efforts to push through the landmark energy bill that was passed by the House yesterday. To cut off debate on the bill and avoid a filibuster, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) needed 60 votes; he got only 53. Republican leaders in the Senate now hope to strip out two key […]

‘Live like a subsidized farmer but on a Hill salary’

This rather droll ad appeared in Roll Call yesterday:

Mexican police conduct anti-logging raid in butterfly habitat

Hundreds of Mexican police raided illegal sawmills near a monarch butterfly reserve yesterday in “the largest seizure of illegally logged wood in the country’s history,” according to the attorney general’s office. Millions of butterflies travel some 2,500 miles each winter to spend the cold season in the Mexican forest, where illegal logging is rampant. The […]

High gas prices make hybrids look even better

A couple of years ago, I ran some numbers trying to figure out which was the better buy for the planet -- a biodiesel Jetta or a hybrid Prius. And I came to the tentative, but perhaps counterintuitive, conclusion that the best buy was ... wait for it ... a Toyota Corolla.

The Corolla, you see, was thousands of dollars cheaper than the Prius (the runner-up), even after I accounted for all the savings on gas from driving a fuel-miser. And if you were a green-minded consumer -- someone whose top priority was reducing climate-warming emissions, say -- you could probably put those thousands to better use somewhere else. Depending on the circumstances, I figured that lots of other investments -- power-sipping appliances, say, or a furnace upgrade, or home insulation, or even donations to a worthy cause -- might all count as "better buys" than a brand-new Prius.

But with recent gas-price spikes, I wondered if my earlier calculations were still holding true. And I've got to admit it: if you're in the market for a new car, a Prius is looking better and better all the time.

NYT on the surge in E. coli outbreaks

"There’s shit in the meat," declared a harried fast-food exec in the Richard Linklater / Eric Schlosser film Fast Food Nation. Well, yes, there is — and more this year than in past years, judging from the number of recalls of beef tainted with the deadly E. coli strain 0157. In an article in yesterday’s […]

Reid will have to decide whether to trim back the bill to get it through

As expected, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid held a cloture vote this morning, trying to force a vote on the energy bill. It failed 53-42. There isn’t much time left this session. Reid has two choices: one, he could follow Pelosi’s bold lead, keep the entire package together, and force Republicans to actually filibuster it […]

Back under debate in the Senate, the farm bill lurches ahead

The farm bill has been languishing in the Senate for weeks, buried under the weight of hundreds of specious, unrelated amendments. But the chamber reached a deal Thursday; each party agreed to float only 20 amendments. That means the bill is back on track. Majority leader Harry Reid vowed the Senate would hammer out a […]

Barge collides with tanker, spilling 2.7 million gallons of oil off South Korean coast

A barge collided with a massive oil tanker this morning about five miles off the coast of South Korea, damaging the tanker’s single hull in three places and resulting in an oil spill estimated at about 2.7 million gallons. The over four-mile-long oil slick is slowly making its way toward what were once probably some […]

Notable quotable

"Jack [Murtha] and other senior leaders now all march to the tune of Nancy Pelosi, to an extent I had not seen, frankly, with any previous Speaker. And I’m surprised by that. I think of John Dingell and the energy business. This is a hot item right now. But I don’t see John Dingell driving […]