Latest Articles
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The next generation puts us to shame
These are the winners of the 16th International Children's' Painting Competition on the Environment. This year's theme was climate change.
The works speak for themselves, but the children who created them also wrote eloquent statements. The winner (top) is by 12 year-old Charlie Sullivan of the United Kingdom, who writes:
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How the meat industry thrives, even as costs rise
Note: This is the second installment of a two-column series on global trends in agriculture. The first was on U.S. fruit and vegetable farming. When corn prices spiked last fall, things looked dire for industrial meat processors. These enormous companies thrive by confining (or contracting with farmers to confine) livestock into tightly packed quarters and […]
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Talking Rain adds organic water flavors
Talking Rain now has four flavors of organic bottled water. Wow.
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Stratfor analysis of the backlash against ethanol
Stratfor’s Bart Mongoven on why the growing negative buzz around ethanol is having limited political effect: … the backlash against biofuels is in full swing. The critics, however, are running head on into the powerful agricultural lobbies in the United States and Europe that so successfully championed the issue in the first place. These advocates […]
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Top 10 most polluted places on earth tallied by Blacksmith Institute
China, India, and Russia are each home to two of the most polluted places on earth, with sites in Azerbaijan, Peru, Ukraine, and Zambia rounding out the top 10, says the second annual tally by the nonprofit Blacksmith Institute. Some 12 million people total live in the affected areas, which are tainted largely by chemical-weapons […]
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In related news, the ’07 corn harvest will break records
For decades now, the USDA has been dumping cash into cellulosic ethanol research (most recently through a joint venture with the DOE). So the USDA’s analysts should know something about the prospects for mass production of cellulosic ethanol, hailed by its boosters as a panacea that can wean us not only from oil, but also […]
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U.S. climate-change research found inadequate in many ways
The good news: the National Research Council finds that the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, started in 2002, has gathered some useful climate data. The bad news: well, where do we start. Less than 2 percent of the money spent by the program has gone to studying how climate change will affect humans. The NRC […]
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Earning it
Another day, another Whitman editorial boosting nukes. At least this one has a slightly better disclaimer: Christine Todd Whitman is the former governor of New Jersey and EPA administrator. She is the CASEnergy Coalition co-chair. The CASEnergy Coalition is an advocacy group that believes greater use of nuclear energy is critical to a U.S. energy […]
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WSJ on the carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade debate
People keep emailing me this Wall Street Journal piece on the debate between carbon tax and cap-and-trade, but as far as I can tell there’s nothing new in it. This is well-trod ground on sites like Grist. The one interesting thing about it is this graphic: For reasons Sean has well–described, I don’t believe these […]
