Latest Articles

How much should we aim to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions?

As faithful Daily Grist readers know, yesterday six western states (and two Canadian provinces) formally debuted the Western Climate Initiative, a cap-and-trade agreement aiming to lower GHG emissions by 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. Carbon neutral in his lifetime. Inevitably, announcements like this are met with heated debate over the target. Is it […]

Is Our Children Greening?

Students and colleges starting to go green It’s school time again, and you know what that means: pencils, books, teachers’ dirty looks, and ambitious eco-minded students. Thanks to the influence of today’s yoots — a generation accustomed to sorting their trash and hyper-aware of global warming — schools across the country are greening up education. […]

Refine! Be That Way!

EPA rejects stricter emissions standards for U.S. refineries Following a review of the refinery pollution rules it issued in 1995, the U.S. EPA has decided not to improve the 12-year-old rules because the analysis found that “the risks to human health and the environment are low enough that no further controls are warranted.” As the […]

Lower the Pollution and Back Away Slowly

BP says it will back off from releasing more Lake Michigan pollution In what’s being billed as a victory for environmentalists, oil company BP has said it will back off from dumping more pollution into Lake Michigan. The company had just weeks ago received permission from Indiana state authorities to increase the amount of sludge […]

No Peaking

Bush administration eases restrictions on mountaintop-removal mining The Bush administration has given a big thumbs-up to mountaintop-removal mining, the practice of blasting the peaks off of mountains and dumping the rubble into watersheds and valleys. A proposed rule issued today will exempt mining waste from an inconsistently interpreted 1983 rule that disallows mining activity within […]

From Glamp to Glam

Best of in-tents Hello muddah, hello faddah, here we are at Glamp Granada. Glam’rous camping‘s entertaining. And we’ll surely have some fun once we’re deplane-ing. Butler’s tending to the fire. Of chef’s prepped food, we won’t tire. Maid gives pillows a little fluff-it. Why would anybody ever want to rough it? Puff daddy In an […]

On the climate change ‘point of no return’

I've argued that scientists are not overestimating climate change, and in fact are underestimating it because they are omitting crucial amplifying feedbacks from their models. In this post, I'll show how these omissions suggest the climate has a "point of no return" that severely constrains the safe level of human-generated emissions.

A major 2005 study [$ub. req'd] led by NCAR climate researcher David Lawrence, found that virtually the entire top 11 feet of permafrost around the globe could disappear by the end of this century. Using the first "fully interactive climate system model" applied to study permafrost, the researchers found that if we somehow stabilize CO2 concentrations in the air at 550 ppm, permafrost would plummet from over 4 million square miles today to 1.5 million. If concentrations hit 690 ppm, permafrost would shrink to just 800,000 square miles.

Romney on energy

Here’s Romney on energy: … his plan to get America “energy independent, by increasing oil, gas, nuclear, and liquid coal development,” calls for it to be done in an environmentally sound manner.

Small countries are going green

While the western media focuses primarily on what the developed world is doing to solve the climate crisis, there's some great coverage on how Third World countries are greening too. SciDev's "Science in the Himalayas," a series of editorials and features, gives credence to the notion that local, community efforts can be just as effective as large-scale centralized ones. And low-tech solutions are often just as good as their high-tech counterparts.

Nepal's successes in scientific application in recent decades aren't about grandiose hydropower dams or major infrastructure projects.

The new technologies that have worked have been indigenously designed, based on traditional skills and knowledge, and are cheap and easy to use and maintain. In fact, to visit Nepal these days is to see the "small is beautiful" concept of development economist E. F. Schumacher in action.

From Nakarmi's Peltric Sets to multi-purpose power units based on traditional water mills, from biogas plants to green road construction techniques in the mountains, Nepalis have shown that small is not just beautiful but also desirable and possible.

GA state legislature tries to figure out whether climate change is real

Wow. Via the indispensable Aunt Phyllis, this is old school: On Tuesday the Georgia legislature held a hearing called "Climate change: fact or fiction?" Listen to these blasts from the past: “In the media, we hear the gloom and doom side,” said Rep. Jeff Lewis (R-White), chairman of the House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee […]