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FEMA prohibits employees from entering toxic trailers

Concerned about formaldehyde fumes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has prohibited its employees from entering thousands of stored trailers. And the hurricane victims living in some 50,000 trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi? Well, FEMA hasn’t gotten around to seeing if those trailers are toxic yet — last week, the agency postponed plans to begin testing […]

Beijing temporarily clears the air

I arrived in Beijing in late October, in time for the last days of the Communist Party's 17th National Congress. That's the top political conference that takes place once every five years, and the city was swarming with national and international visitors and press.

That day there were blue skies in Beijing. No kidding. The streets were swept clean, the sidewalk vendors gone, the DVD hawkers on holiday. There were many more police on the street, fewer cars. The sunset looked oily, a slick translucent glow to the clouds -- but the last time I visited Beijing in April, I hadn't even seen the sun through the smog.

Beijing during the Congress. Photo: Christina Larson

I spoke with a representative from the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau the following Monday who neither confirmed nor denied -- typical here -- what everyone else told me: In time for the big event, the city had ordered official cars off the road and shuttered surrounding factories. And voila, brighter skies. (As a test, I even went for a run.)

Two days later, the conference was over. The skies were grey, the sun obscured. There were once again cigarette butts and orange peels on the sidewalk; the clack-clack of sidewalk cobblers, and the men waving "Bourne Identity 3" DVDs. I coughed as I walked down the street; the air left a strange aftertaste.

The Farm Bill debate does hinge on subsidies

This is a guest post from Britt Lundgren, an Agricultural Policy Fellow at Environmental Defense. —– Tom Philpott’s recent column on the ongoing debate over Farm Bill reform raises some interesting points, including the idea that commodity subsidies may not be the root cause of overproduction. But he misses the real point behind the debate, […]

Hound your representative to add an RPS to the energy bill

If scientists could take the repeated dashing of hopes for a better future and harness it to make electrons, we'd have electricity too cheap to meter. If the crushing of expectations were a renewable resource, this Congress is truly on the cutting edge of the clean energy revolution.

Apparently, Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi met on Thursday morning and decided to move an energy bill that does not include an RPS [see this post]. Or a tax title. No tax title means no extension of the investment tax credit for solar, and no extension of the production tax credit for wind. Let's see ... nothing for solar, plus nothing for wind, ... add no RPS, carry the zero ... yep, that adds up to nothing for renewable energy. Got that? Congressional leadership is moving an energy bill with nothing in it for renewable energy.

We've got maybe 24 hours to turn this around. I suggest a phone blitz. Melt the %$@*! switchboard. Call your representative. Suggested script:

Everyday folk found to be contaminated with toxic chemicals

Volunteers across the U.S. were found to have toxic bisphenol-A, PBDEs, and phthalates in their blood and urine, says a small study sponsored by a coalition of environmental health groups. The “Is It in Us?” study analyzed 35 people from seven states; while the sample size was too small to be representative of the larger […]

The Lieberman-Warner full committee markup …

… will take place on Dec. 5 (sub. rqd.). Lieberman says he’s open to some changes, as long as they don’t splinter the coalition: Lieberman said he didn’t expect the bill’s 2020 emission target (about 15 percent below 2005 levels) to change. But he added there may be consensus on tightening the 2050 limits that […]

Beware the allure of liquefied natural gas

Two years ago, one of us (Jason) was at an energy industry conference planning committee and he made the point that whether or not everyone around the table agreed on global warming, the issue was just about to break out and dominate the public conversation on energy. Because of global warming, he went on to say, getting a new coal-fired power station built was just a "prudency review waiting to happen." For those of you that remember, it was, in many ways, the prudency review process that killed the nuclear industry back in the 1980s.

In the past several weeks, several announcements suggest that this situation has indeed come to pass. Here's what's going on: the Kansas Department of Health and Environment turned down a permit for 1400-MW of coal-fired power based on emissions of global warming gases. This is arguably the first time a coal plant has been denied for this reason. Let's repeat the state: Kansas. It's not California, Florida, New York,or Oregon. Kansas has historically been a coal-friendly state.

Another story revealed that even in Montana, a coal-producing state (or at least one with significant coal reserves), coal plant permits are being fought by bipartisan coalitions, and that electric utilities concede that these groups are effective. In other reports that cross our desks regularly, we note that more than 10,000 MW of coal plants recently have been canceled or postponed around the country.

No doubt many are of you are cheering! But there are trade-offs in all things -- especially in energy, environmental, and economic issues. As enthusiasm for coal wanes, it grows for nuclear, even among some that have fought tooth and nail against nuclear in the past. However, there's a problem. The fastest any nuclear plant can come online, given regulatory and financing hurdles, is around 2015. Meanwhile, electricity demand continues to grow. As much as the rewewables camp wants to believe it, solar and wind are not going to supply all or even most of the necessary power anytime soon. (We strongly believe in renewable energy, but also believe that we need energy storage to make it work on a scale that will be able to replace a significant amount of fossil fuels.) So what's going to replace coal as the dominant fuel for electricity production?

Kansas, Minnesota pledge to green up government computer systems

Think of states that are environmental frontrunners, and Kansas and Minnesota may not leap immediately to mind. But it’s those two that are taking the lead in reducing energy use from government computer systems. Teaming up with the industry-backed Climate Savers Computing Initiative, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) — […]

Why Bush’s water-bill veto was actually a good idea

Michael Grunwald, senior correspondent for

He was the toast of Congress earlier this year, but yesterday Bush was less popular.

Photo: whitehouse.gov

Hooray! The Everglades and coastal Louisana have been rescued! Activists and politicians alike are giddy over the news that Congress overwhelmingly overrode President Bush's veto of the Water Resources Development Act yesterday. The override authorizes $5 billion worth of new Army Corps of Engineers projects for the dying Everglades and the devastated Louisiana coast, plus another $18 billion worth of new projects for the rest of the country. It was the first veto override of the Bush era, an unprecedented bipartisan rebuke to an anti-environmental White House. The Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, and the National Parks Conservation Association are celebrating. So are the elected officials of Florida and Louisiana, even Bush-friendly Republicans like Senators Mel Martinez and David Vitter.

You'd think I'd be fired up, too. I wrote a book about the plight of the Everglades. I wrote an angry Time Magazine cover story about the plight of coastal Louisiana. I hold no brief for the global warming denier in the White House.

But this time, Bush was right.

Dem leadership considers axing renewable energy from the energy bill

OK. I'm still trying to report this out. What I have for now comes from environmental advocates, off-the-record conversations, and, for what it's worth, my own speculation. The situation is very fluid, and can change at any time (as in, by the time you read this). Near as I can tell, though, this is how things look going into tonight:

I've learned from concerned advocates that Democratic congressional leadership is considering stripping the production tax credits for wind and solar, along with the federal renewable portfolio standard, from the conference bill. Losing the RPS and the PTC would mean jettisoning basically every measure that the White House has complained about. Apparently, Reid and Pelosi may have decided that a bill with a Renewable Fuel Standard (i.e., monstrous subsidies for ethanol) and a boost in CAFE standards is enough to secure Democratic bragging rights on energy.

If this happens, it will mean there's bupkis in the energy bill for renewable electricity, imperiling probably billions of dollars in solar and wind contracts that have been written with the expectation that the production tax credits will lower costs to investors and consumers.