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In Tents

Climate camp kicks off at London’s Heathrow Airport The controversial Climate Camp at London’s Heathrow Airport kicks off today, with as many as 2,000 people expected to attend at its height. The weeklong protest is aimed at airport officials’ plans to build a new runway, and at the role of aviation in climate change. “Aviation […]

Putting the Yeehaw in Hubris

U.S. federal agencies, World Bank help developing countries emit more President Bush has made clear his feelings on global-warming mitigation: “We all can make major strides, and yet there won’t be a reduction until China and India are participants.” So it seems a wee bit hypocritical that the United States is actually contributing to global-warming […]

Shrinky-Dinky Do

Great Lakes, Arctic sea ice shrinking to record lows It could be a summer of record lows in two of the world’s iconic places: the Great Lakes and the Arctic seas. Water levels in Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior are well below normal, and Superior could soon hit a record low set in 1926. The […]

Why aren’t people doing this stuff already?

DR: If every industrial facility in the world has been throwing money on the ground, why has it taken so long for somebody to come along and pick it up? What’s the catch? TC: EPA did a study and it appears that we can generate 20 percent of our electricity with industrial energy that’s now […]

Yolk, yolk, yolk …

From the NYT: The toy industry had its Tickle Me Elmo, the automakers the Prius and technology its iPhone. Now, the food world has its latest have-to-have-it product: the cage-free egg. What the cluck, you ask? According to the story, dozens of vendors — ranging from universities to hotel chains, Whole Foods to Burger King […]

Watch out for that flaming bag of McNuggets

I'm so spoiled now that I live in bike-path-licious Boulder, Colorado. I hardly have to interact with cars anymore when cycling to most points in the city. But just a few weeks ago, before I moved here, I was out there with all the other Colorado cyclists in traffic getting assaulted.

Sure, most assaults are verbal and harmless-ish, but then there are the ones that aren't. This article from today's Los Angeles Times leads with a list of one guy's experience in L.A.:

Scott Sing has had a tire iron hurled at him, a water bottle thrown at his head and been bombarded with racial epithets. And all he was trying to do was ride his bike on Los Angeles city streets.

His cycling and running brethren tell similar tales -- of being peppered with flying objects, cursed or otherwise assaulted -- and those don't even include the stories of near-misses and actual collisions.

A partial rundown of my own misadventures in bicycle-motorist interactions include being run off the road thrice (Loveland, Colo.; Durango, Colo.; and Skokomish Indian Reservation on Hwy 101, Wash.), hit by cars twice (Seattle, Wash., both times), and had the following items tossed at me from moving vehicles:

Sign me up

This is the true story of seven strangers, picked to live in an energy-efficient house, work together, and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting green. From the press release [PDF]: The Real World house will include everything from solar energy solutions to bamboo flooring, […]

A funny for word nerds

This is, I suppose, vaguely environmental, but I’m only blogging it because it’s hilarious. At least if you’re a word nerd like me.

Correcting two misunderstandings

As we discuss "cap-and-steal" (aka "cap-and-trade"), "cap-and-sell" (aka "cap-and-auction"), and carbon taxes -- three ways of putting prices on carbon -- it is worth remembering that putting a price on greenhouse-gas emissions is not enough to bring them under control. Gristmill is full of posts showing ways to save carbon at a profit. David posted an interview on Recycled Energy today that points to something that has been known, but mostly ignored, for over thirty years.

I can, and have in the past, posted extensive theoretical musings on this. But the bottom line is that if we are ignoring available savings at current prices, it seems likely that we would continue to ignore savings at artificially higher prices.

This sometimes makes people jump to the opposite extreme; if (as I insist) we can cut emissions by 90 percent or more, at prices comparable to fossil fuel, why do we need to put a price on carbon alone?

The answer is while we can cut emissions at a total cost comparable to what we currently pay for fossil fuels, that does not mean that every component is individually cheaper. The existence of market imperfections does not mean that markets don't have a role to play in solving the problem.

Let's take green buildings as a concrete example. There are a fair number of green commercial buildings that consume 30 percent of the energy of the typical U.S. building, and pay back the costs of those savings in four years or less.

Turns out that NAFTA superhighway is superfictitious

Last year I caught wind of concern on the far right about a "NAFTA Superhighway," an (alleged) gargantuan new road, four football fields wide, that would plow straight up through the country from the Mexican border, through Texas, through Minnesota, all the way up into Canada. Foreigners would own parts of it! The World Bank […]