Latest Articles
-
Climate change mitigation strategy could actually damage the planet
Earl Killian sends me this WSJ op-ed: "Thinking Big on Global Warming" (subs. req'd.). He sees some good news in it -- the WSJ "published a non-denier [opinion] piece."
Yes, but geo-engineering is one of the delayers' sexiest strategies -- holding out the promise of a pure techno-fix that doesn't require all those annoying regulations needed to completely change our energy system. The conservative (duh!) authors of the WSJ piece embrace trying to "develop capabilities for increasing the fraction of sunlight that is reflected outward by the upper atmosphere back into space." They claim: "We know it would work because it happens naturally all the time."
Yes, volcanoes spew out aerosols that cool the Earth, but I have previously debunked aerosol geo-engineering. The authors seem unaware of a major study that finds "doing so would cause problems of its own, including potentially catastrophic drought."
And, of course, this strategy allows unfettered ocean acidification, and as noted recently, "when CO2 levels in the atmosphere reach about 500 parts per million, you put calcification out of business in the oceans."
So we might temporarily stave off superheating the planet, but still bring ruinous climate change and destroyed the ocean ecosystem! The authors claim:
Do not try to sell climate geo-engineering to committed enemies of fossil fuels. Although several geo-engineering options appear to be highly cost-effective, ideological opposition to them is often fierce. Fashionable blogs are replete with conspiracy theories and misinformed attacks.
Who are these enemies of fossil fuels? I don't know such people. I know enemies of greenhouse gases. I am one of those. But we tend to like natural gas, and many of us would be okay with coal if you added permanent carbon capture and storage. Greenhouse-gas mitigation avoids catastrophic global warming with high confidence and few negative side effects (and, indeed, many positive side effects). No one has proposed a geoengineering plan that meets either of those two tests.
-
As food series ends, the story is just beginning
During my trip to the Midwest this summer, I saw many unsettling sights: vast monocropped landscapes lashed regularly with chemicals, insidious low-slung buildings that imprison thousands of animals and concentrate their waste. Yet I returned oddly invigorated, buzzing about Iowa’s promise as a sustainable-ag mecca. Amid the cornfields and the CAFOs, I saw thriving homestead […]
-
More on the nine ‘errors’ in Gore’s movie
As I said in my earlier post on the subject, there’s less than meets the eye to the story of the British judge that found nine "errors" in An Inconvenient Truth. Turns out they weren’t errors, just points the judge deemed different enough from the IPCC view to warrant explanatory materials — and the judge […]
-
Environmental Defense responds on Lieberman-Warner support
The following is a guest post from Tony Kreindler of Environmental Defense.
-----
Glenn Hurowitz writes that Environmental Defense has "abandoned other green groups" by voicing support for climate change legislation introduced last week by Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner. "Environmental Defense is once again destroying the unity of the environmental movement by endorsing this bill now despite some major weaknesses," he says.
For the record, Environmental Defense has not endorsed the Lieberman-Warner bill, America's Climate Security Act. We've certainly praised parts of it we think work well, and we've given the authors what we think is well-deserved credit for making a serious attempt to get comprehensive climate change legislation passed in this Congress. We've also said we will work to strengthen the bill, particularly to achieve the deeper long-term emissions reductions scientists tell us we need to avoid a climate catastrophe. We may do that differently than some, but we will do it.
Has Environmental Defense broken from the pack? All environmental groups have specific views on the bill's strengths and weaknesses, which can't fully be captured in the following quotes, but let's take a look at what some other environmental groups had to say about the bill:
-
New poll finds public wants renewables over coal
And the bad news for coal / good news for humanity just keeps rolling in. According to a new poll (PDF): 75 percent of Americans — including 65 percent of Republicans, 83 percent of Democrats and 76 percent of Independents — would "support a five-year moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in the United States […]
-
-
Sam Brownback drops out of presidential race
Republican Sen. Sam Brownback dropped out of the presidential race today, having failed to gain many fans or much moola — or develop much of an environmental platform. If you want to ponder what might have been, check out the eco-focused interview Grist conducted with Brownback this fall and the fact sheet we compiled on […]
-
Bush threatens to veto Democratic energy bill
According to this article in Roll Call (sub. rqd.), on Monday President Bush sent Congressional Democrats a letter with a list of demands regarding what must be or not be in the energy bill in order to avoid his veto. Among the demands: no increase in taxes (i.e., no repealing tax giveaways to oil companies) […]
-
Grist maximum leader Chip Giller lights up the pages of Time
Laugh, or the planet gets it. Photo: John Clark, TIME. The cover story in TIME magazine’s international edition this week is "Heroes of the Environment." Lots of good stuff to browse through, but around here we’re particularly fond of #28: Environmentalists are the people you want to avoid at a party. Trust me — I’m […]
-
Bikeways pay for themselves
A decade ago, we wrote that the bicycle is one of the world's seven everyday wonders because it's so simple, effective, affordable, and pollution-free. To that list, we might have added "enriching."
Bicycling for transportation pumps money into local economies. Bikes are wheels of fortune. (Thanks to Flickr photographer hanbyholems for the picture to the right.) If your community spends money building bikeways, you and your neighbors will cycle more. Your cycling will put extra money in the local economy. (I'll explain how in a moment.) The extra money will make the community rich enough to pay for more bikeways. More bikeways will induce more cycling, and the virtuous circle will continue.
Let's break the process into steps.
Building bikeways costs money.
Bikeways are cheap, especially compared to roads and trains, but they're not free. In the Puget Sound area, construction can easily cost more than $1 million per mile for a new trail or lane -- not counting land. Seattle's 10-year Bicycle Master Plan sketches a citywide network of cycling routes estimated to cost about $240 million. Retrofitting all of Cascadia's communities for Bicycle Respect -- integrated systems of separate, signaled bikeways as found in parts of northern Europe -- would cost billions of dollars. (Sort of like RTID/ST and Pacific Gateway.)
