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Canada announces protections for Lake Superior

Canada will protect nearly 4,000 square miles of Lake Superior and its northern shores, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday. The announcement creates the world’s largest freshwater marine protected area; no word on how the shrinkage of Lake Superior will affect that record.

Notable quotable

“I can promise you that as president I will have him involved in our administration in a very senior capacity.” — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, on Nobel Peace Laureate Al Gore

U.N. report says world environment doing quite poorly

Just in case you thought the world’s environment might be doing well, the United Nations Environment Program released a comprehensive 550-page, 5-year report this week declaring that things are officially not OK, environment-wise. The UNEP’s Global Environmental Outlook attempted to strike that rare balance between cataloguing the world’s substantial eco-ills without making the situation seem […]

Not the coal and gas kind, though we’ve seen lots of that

I’m going to keep this short and sweet, because it’s been a long day. We headed out of St. Louis in the mid-afternoon, but before we did, we spent some time with Laura Cohen, who heads up the Confluence Greenway Project — an incredibly complex (we’re talking Venn diagram here) conglomeration of agencies, nonprofits, and […]

St. Louis’ City Museum is a treasure

I apologize if the image at left is a bit hard to make out, but if it looks like a bunch of junk to you, then you’re seeing it clearly. This is the outdoor portion of the City Museum in downtown St. Louis. It’s absolutely the most unique place I’ve ever seen, and it’s completely […]

Notable quotable, non-environmental edition

“It depends on who does it.” — Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, on whether waterboarding is torture

Earth still round; sky, blue

IPCC: climate change will hit poor hardest.

No supply-side energy solution will come to our rescue

No one is going to come to the rescue on the supply side -- and, of course, we remain stuck with an administration that doesn't believe in demand-reduction strategies.

As the Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd) reported in "OPEC's Lever Loses Its Pull on Oil":

Oil prices are hovering near historic highs, but consuming nations shouldn't expect quick relief from OPEC, the world's only source for big, quick supplies.

For several reasons, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has neither the clear leverage nor the inclination to open the spigots and drive down the price of crude, which jumped past $90 a barrel in intraday trading in New York last week for the first time.

This figure shows how little spare capacity OPEC has -- essentially none outside of Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis have no inclination to initiate a major price drop, especially since these prices do not appear to be destroying demand.

Moreover, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned back in July that it saw "OPEC spare capacity declining to minimal levels by 2012."

And the WSJ notes no one outside of OPEC will be coming to the rescue either:

Saudi Arabia has little to fear from the world's other major producers, such as Russia, which in decades past have ramped up supplies in an effort to capture a greater market share. But at the moment, the world's major producers for the most part are already pumping flat-out.

"They have little competition from non-OPEC suppliers and few worries about losing market share," says Jeffrey Currie, senior energy economist at Goldman Sachs in London.

We cannot be far from $100+ oil.

Notable quotable

“Well, there are public health benefits to climate change, as well, both benefits and concerns …” — White House spokeswoman Dana Perino

Two new environmental blogs

In general, I have been critical of media coverage of global warming. So I am pleased to announce that two of the best environmental journalists working have launched blogs:

• A new environmental blog from Mark Hertsgaard, the terrific environment correspondent for The Nation (and author of a lot of great books).

• A new sustainability blog from The New York Times, dotearth, led by their first-rate climate reporter, Andrew Revkin. Revkin notes the limits of the traditional media on these issues: