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Nearly 200 species added to World Conservation Union’s Red List

The World Conservation Union has added 188 animals and plants to its Red List, a tally of the flora and fauna most threatened with extinction. The additions bring the depressing total up to 16,306 species — and that’s a low estimate. Ten Galapagos Island coral species joined their endangered brethren on the list for the […]

Debating Bjorn Lomborg on global warming

I taped a debate with Lomborg today on a Denver radio station. I'll post a link when it will be broadcast on the Internet. I'll be interested to hear your reactions.

I have long thought it is pretty much impossible to win a one-on-one debate on climate change with anybody who knows what they're doing -- who knows the literature and is willing to make statements that are not really true but can't be quickly disproved. After all, the audience is not in a position to adjudicate scientific and technological issues, so it just comes down to who sounds more persuasive. And Lomborg is quite good at sounding reasonable -- he doesn't deny the reality of climate change, only its seriousness.

Lomborg is more of what I term a delayer -- the clever person's denier. Lomborg is especially persuasive because he is so clearly concerned about reducing suffering and death in the Third World.

Religious leaders convene for a floating climate-change symposium

Religious leaders from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Shiite, Shinto, and Sunni traditions are in the midst of a six-day climate-change symposium coordinated by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. Traveling on a ship down the coast of rapidly melting Greenland, the leaders are floating ideas on cooperating to close the perceived gap between religious and environmental interests. […]

Creative use of wind saves cargo vessels fuel

While sailing ships are unlikely to make a comeback anytime soon for oceanic shipping, adding sails to fossil-powered cargo vessels is definitely "on the horizon." This not-new idea is now compatible with the needs of shipping companies, and the savings make both climatic and economic sense:

Lenders offering mortgages that reward energy efficiency

Shocking news: an element of everyday American life is going green! Yes, now you too can pay off your house with a green mortgage. While many lenders have long had offers of bigger loans and discounts to buyers whose homes meet energy-efficiency standards, such plans are now being marketed more aggressively, and many homebuyers are […]

‘Carbon-friendly’ utilities may not necessarily be in the public interest

Following the discussion under David's latest post about Edwards' position on carbon capture at coal plants, I thought it appropriate to point out a few things about the electric business that are critical to this debate -- but not widely appreciated.

An electric utility is a weird amalgam of lots of historic political philosophies -- most of which are in direct contradiction to modern ideas, but are difficult to repeal.

According to the modern pro-market ideal, businesses should have profit incentives in competitive markets, so that Adam Smith's invisible hand will create consumer value. But to an early 20th-century regulator (who wrote the rules under which most modern electric utilities were formed), certain public goods were so important as to mandate government intervention. (One of the best examples is Einstein, who thought that Karl Marx had some really good ideas, in large part because he saw the problems of the world so clearly that he couldn't conceive of an unregulated market rising to address them. See here.)

This is indicative of an era in which socialism was a live concept rather than historical record, when regulators and academics could debate the pros and cons of central planning without any evidence of the excesses such systems could create. It was also an era when the excesses of the mercantilist Gilded Age were becoming evident, and smart, well-intentioned folks were looking for a better way.

Inuit villagers give birth to twice as many girls as boys

Twice as many girls as boys are being born in Arctic communities across Greenland and northern Russia, where Inuit villagers are known to have high levels of human-made chemicals in their blood. Many babies are being born premature; baby boys tend to be small. Hormone-mimicking chemicals originate in industrialized countries, travel to the Arctic by […]

German Chancellor Merkel focuses on climate change

In Germany, when the going gets tough, the tough go green:

Chancellor Angela Merkel seems to have realized that, contrary to the song lyrics, sometimes it's quite easy being green.

Mrs. Merkel has shied away from the biggest fight at home: the deep economic restructuring she advocated during her campaign two years ago. And on the matter of the suspected terrorist plot in the heart of Germany, she has remained in the background, apparently happy to cede the limelight to her interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.

But in the past month Mrs. Merkel could be found inspecting glaciers in Greenland and calling for new measures to combat global warming at a conference in Kyoto, Japan. It was as if Ronald Reagan had turned into Al Gore after being elected. But the voters loved it, awarding her the highest approval ratings any chancellor has enjoyed since World War II. [my emphasis]

The fact that a center-right politician can ride eco-campaigning to popularity could be a lesson for U.S. Republicans. Though Fred Thompson recently ridiculed global warming, polls show doing so might not be the smartest political move. The environment is the one issue on which Republican politicians are most out-of-step with the Republican base. According to a recent Pew study, 65 percent of Republicans want stricter environmental laws (though it's questionable how much of a voting priority it is). Ultimately, however, Merkel's ability to pull off a green hat trick shows the importance of creating bipartisan support for environmental protection.

Washington Post vets green sporting gear

The Washington Post takes a look at athletic products claiming to be green — surfboards, sports balls, skateboards, bikes, and snowboards — and gives a rundown of their eco- and consumer-friendliness from both a layperson and expert perspective.

BusinessWeek allows Whitman to lobby for nukes under the guise of an op-ed

Here’s yet another op-ed from Christie Whitman cheerleading for nuclear power. To get a sense of the bad faith that infuses the whole thing, check out this paragraph: Of course, we could buy energy-saving appliances or drive fuel-efficient cars. We can recycle cans, bottles, and newspapers. We can even plant carbon-absorbing trees. But, no matter […]