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EPA not enforcing Clean Water Act, says report

The U.S. EPA is not so much enforcing the Clean Water Act, says a new report from green group U.S. PIRG. According to EPA data, 57 percent of the country’s industrial plants and municipal wastewater facilities dumped more than the allowable level of pollutants and sewage into waterways at least once in 2005, the most […]

Nobel Prize is a nice follow up to Oceana Award

We are thrilled to learn that Al Gore just won the Nobel Prize. As David Roberts points out, he certainly deserved it and this is good news for all of us in the environmental community and in the world.

Gore was also presented with Oceana's 2007 Partners Award this past Friday. The former vice president's work on highlighting the challenges climate change presents to our oceans is incredibly important.

Gore was joined by Dr. Daniel Pauly, winner of the 2007 Ted Danson Ocean Hero award. Pauly is one of the world's preeminent fisheries scientists.

Top climate scientist debunks Lomborg in the Washington Post

The Washington Post has at least had the decency to run a rebuttal to the absurd Bjørn Lomborg piece they ran on Sunday (also debunked here and here).

They chose one of the top climate scientists in the country -- Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I count her a friend, having interviewed her for my book and having spent a couple of days in Florida with her giving joint talks -- she on hurricanes and climate (with her colleague Peter Webster), and me on climate solutions.

I recommend anything she writes (here is a great piece on the science and politics of the hurricanes and global warming debate [PDF]). You can read the whole piece debunking Lomborg, "Cooler Heads and Climate Change," here. One point in particular bears repeating:

EPA will develop industry regulations for carbon sequestration

Setting aside questions of technical challenges and commercial viability, the U.S. EPA has announced that it will develop industry regulations for carbon sequestration by power plants. By next summer, expect exciting new regulations to “ensure there is a consistent and effective permit system under the Safe Drinking Water Act” for injecting captured carbon dioxide deep […]

Can the House and the Senate agree on energy legislation?

The prospects for a successful reconciling of the House and Senate energy bills remain as iffy today as they were last month. How sad such failure would be at a time of record oil prices and a growing consensus of the need for urgent action on climate change.

The big obstacle right now is that Senate Republicans oppose a House-Senate conference. E&E News (subs. reqd.) reports:

"It looks like Senate Republicans are not going to agree to a conference, so we will probably see the same process on this bill that we saw with several other pieces of legislation this year," [Henry] Waxman [D-Calif.] told reporters after the meeting.

What is this alternative process?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) intends to reconcile the House and Senate energy bills without convening a formal conference committee.

Even this approach is no guarantee of success, as many roadblocks remain in Congress and the White House:

Al Gore and the IPCC win Nobel Peace Prize

It’s official: Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have won the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change,” the Nobel committee said. The former vice president was […]

Al Gore and the IPCC jointly win peace prize

Photo: Stephen Lovekin/WireImage Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” Here’s the press release. Here is […]

Friday music blogging: Vampire Weekend

The music blogs are all abuzz about a new band called Vampire Weekend, based on a three-song EP (the full album comes out in Jan. ’08). I don’t think you can get the EP at stores, but you can stream the songs on their website. I like it pretty well. It’s squaresville for sure — […]

A conversation with Michael Pollan

  In his 1996 book Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, the great food anthropologist Sidney Mintz concluded that the United States had no cuisine. Interestingly, Mintz’s definition of cuisine came down to conversation. For Mintz, Americans just didn’t engage in passionate talk about food. Unlike the southwest French and their cassoulet, most Americans don’t obsess and […]

My Nobel Peace Prize prediction

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be jointly won by Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC. You heard it here first!