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Dow Chemical evades legal responsibility for chemical spill in India

In 1984, thousands of people in Bhopal, India, were killed by the effects of a cyanide leak from a U.S.-owned pesticide plant. The plant owner, Union Carbide Corp., was bought by Dow Chemical in 2001; since then, Dow has evaded responsibility for cleaning up the more than 9,000 tons of chemicals still affecting soil and […]

Gray whale killed by Makah tribe members in surprise hunt

Photo: bbum A gray whale was harpooned off the coast of Washington state this weekend in a surprise hunt by members of the Makah tribe. The tribe does have hard-won treaty rights to conduct whale hunts, but this weekend’s kill was not sanctioned since the tribe has not yet succeeded in obtaining a necessary waiver […]

U.S. study says two-thirds of polar bears will be gone by 2050

The U.S. Geological Survey released a grim study of polar bears on Friday, concluding that two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will be gone by 2050. Polar bears in Alaska and other areas outside the very far north will be most out of luck, according to the study; it forecasts that precisely zero polar bears […]

Coal-to-liquid is a dead end if there’s a price on CO2

One final post on this week's liquid coal hearing. Forbes wrote up the hearing and got my bluntest quote:

"Coal-to-liquid is just a dead end, from a climate perspective," added Joseph Romm, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress. "Liquid coal will not have a future in this country, no matter how much money Congress squanders on it."

Well, I guess "liberal-leaning" is better than "liberal."

Why is liquid coal a dead end? Because, as I explain in my testimony, even a relatively low price for carbon dioxide is fatal to liquid coal's economics, as made clear in two recent report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration:

Eh …

… who needs sea ice and polar bears anyway.

Enter a climate video contest, win a Toyota hybrid

Watch this short eco-video, then make one of your own and enter it in the Ecospot Contest.

(Having trouble viewing the video? Download the latest version of Flash.)

Ultracapacitor company claims it will revolutionize electric cars

The AlwaysOn Network has selected its GoingGreen 100 — the 100 top companies in greentech, based on "innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value creation, and media attention or ‘buzz.’" Here’s the category I’m watching: Energy Storage A123 Systems Bloom Energy Cobasys Deeya Energy EEStor GridPoint Jadoo Power Lilliputian Systems ZPower (Gridpoint was the top company […]

There’s one

Chris Dodd comes out in support of Dingell’s carbon tax proposal. Think anybody else will?

Fred Thompson’s confused stance on climate change

He's running for president now, so let's revisit Fred Thompson's climate change confusion. He took some standard denier myths and threw in a dash of his own unwarranted sarcasm to create this mishmash on the Paul Harvey radio show:

Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto.

NASA says the Martian South Pole's "ice cap" has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter's caught the same cold, because it's warming up too, like Pluto.

This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.

Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn't even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There's a consensus.

Ask Galileo.

I thought Thompson was a member of the Churches of Christ, not a heliolater or perhaps a Druid. I have previously debunked this bit of denier disinformation and will expand on the key facts below -- especially his misguided sun worship.

Rev. Allen Johnson calls on churches to condemn mountaintop-removal mining

This is a guest post from Rev. Allen Johnson, whom we interviewed last year as part of our God & the Environment series. Johnson heads Christians for the Mountains, a group fighting to protect the Appalachians from mountaintop-removal mining. This post is reprinted with permission from the Moyers Blog.

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On August 22, The New York Times published an article that began, "The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday [August 24] that would enshrine the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal."

Enshrine? An oddly appropriate word, I thought -- a biblical word, even. A place where dwell the gods; in this case, the gods of money, comfort, and power.

For over two years I have been involved with a network organization, Christians for the Mountains, to engage Christians and their churches to take on the moral question of mountaintop removal. The massive scale of beheading coal-bearing mountains, obliterating headwater streams, and building multi-billion-gallon toxic slurry impoundments begs biblical and theological activity.