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More Murray

Yesterday the Washington Post ran a profile of Robert Murray, head of Murray Energy, owner of the Utah mine that recently collapsed and all around evil motherfvcker. I actually thought the story did a decent job of showing what an unhinged fruitcake Murray is, gibbering on about how "elites" who attack coal don’t understand what […]

Debunking the notion that walking is bad for the planet

Sheesh. Wouldn't you know it, the "walking is bad for the planet" meme has reared its head yet again, this time in a British newspaper:

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk ... than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes.

This made its way to the top of Digg over the weekend, and it's little wonder. It's got all the characteristics of a "sticky idea": it's simple, it's memorable, it seems credible, and most of all, it's unexpected -- which makes it perfect for passing around at the water cooler.

Yet it's actually nothing new. Versions of this idea have been circulating since at least the 1980s. I blogged about a similar claim a year ago. Moreover, as I found out when I ran the numbers, there's a good reason this claim is so counterintuitive: it's false!

Congress’ dimmest bulb laughs at bikes

The energy bill just passed by the House contains a provision that would offer a $20 monthly tax rebate to bicycle commuters. When Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) found out, he took to the floor of the House to deliver this speech (via Streetsblog): A major component of the Democrats’ energy legislation and the Democrats’ answer […]

Subways are the best

Recently I tracked down an article on the annual electricity use of the New York City subway system: 1.8 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh). To put that in perspective, the entire U.S. economy uses about 4,000 billion kwh annually. According to the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, there were 1.499 billion trips made on the subway in 2006. So it takes a little over 1 kwh to move one person on trips, of varying length, in New York City.

That's 4.1 million riders per day, on average. So if 200 million trips a day are required in the U.S. for everybody, and if everybody rode a subway, we would need about 90 billion kwh for personal transportation -- about 2 percent of our current electricity use.

For comparison, let's use Gar Lipow's estimation that a super-duper plug-in hybrid would travel 65 miles using 8 kwh.  If the average trip was 8 miles, we would also have 1 kwh per trip. Something to strive for?

Leo’s new eco-flick

I saw The 11th Hour last night, a new movie produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. The movie is a pastiche of interviews of about 50 different thinkers and scientists, interspersed with stock footage of obligatory mountains and seal clubbings. Here's how Leonardo describes it:

They didn’t like being called ‘costumed twits’

Yesterday I took some potshots at the Greenpeace protestors following Rep. John Dingell around. Chris Miller, director of Greenpeace US’s global warming campaign, contacted me to ask if he could post a response. Of course I said yes. Again, for those who seem to miss this: this post is not by me, David Roberts. It […]

The CEO of Ford Motor Co. …

.. wants a roughly $6-per-gallon tax on gas. That’s the only way, he says, Americans will stop "demanding" gas-guzzling cars. No comment.

The Inferior Department

I’ll admit I don’t know as much about the Interior Department as I should. In my experience, however, it is the nation’s No. 1 source of environmental humor. First, it’s run by a guy named Dirk Kempthorne. Dirk! That pleased our headline writers to no end, though not as much as Johnson getting EPA. Then […]

Not any more

Nope. This is actually pretty nifty, if you’re a solar geek. This company, G24i, has been working for a long while to come up with solar cells covered in a dye that, when struck by light, discharges an electron, which is immediately captured by a neighboring crystal of titanium oxide. It’s unlikely it will scale […]

15 Green Colleges and Universities

See which colleges got top marks from Grist, then grade our effort in the comments section at the bottom of this page. Photo: Mauro Carballo College of the Atlantic This small school in Bar Harbor, Maine, has just one major: human ecology — or “the study of our relationship with our environment.” So it only […]