Latest Articles

Getting something done is the priority

The following is a guest essay from Tony Kreindler of Environmental Defense, in response to Charles Komanoff’s post from earlier today, "Strange bedfellows in climate politics." —– Charles Komanoff’s post is entertaining, but a lot of what he says is wrong. His main proposition is that unlike "devilishly complex" cap-and-trade, a carbon tax is straightforward […]

New energy rules could unleash an economic boom and help quash climate change

In 1997, as the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change was being negotiated, the U.S. Senate voted, 95-0, to reject any agreement that “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.” The senators were acting on the widespread fear that the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy would hurt American businesses […]

The former: Not good for the latter

How climate change will disproportionately affect the world's poor is a message making the rounds of late, after the publication of the second IPCC report earlier this year. How climate change policies, such as carbon taxes, will either help or hurt the poor is also a topic we've been discussing of late.

Now researchers at the University of Minnesota have assessed the impact of an increased dependence on biofuels on the developing world ... and the outlook isn't good.

In short, conflating food and energy lands us in a quagmire in which corn (and ethanol) prices are still tethered to oil:

Solar is making boats go now — take that, wind!

Wind, you think you are so badass. I tell you, solar is creeping up on you where you least expect it:

A Nation columnist goes contrarian; GM goes the other way

Did lefty pundit Alexander Cockburn and corporate behemoth General Motors secretly agree to swap climate positions?

It looks that way. GM, swallowing hard, recently joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, the elite enviro-business coalition pushing cap-and-trade -- a so-called "market-based system" for controlling carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, the famously acidic Cockburn lacerated global warming orthodoxy in his column in the Nation magazine, deriding it as a "fearmongers' catechism [of] crackpot theories" ginned up by "grant-guzzling climate careerists" and opportunistic politicians looking to ride the greenhouse "threatosphere" all the way to the White House. (Whew!)

But there's less here than meets the eye. For as the inconvenient details of cap-and-trade schemes start to surface, USCAP is looking less and less like a CO2 control lobby and more like a corporate club seeking to cash in on the rising clamor against free carbon spewing. And Cockburn, it turns out, has been raining on the climate crisis parade for years.

The federal gov’t is blocking state efforts to fight climate change

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell (R) take to the pages of the Washington Post to send President Bush a simple message: “It’s high time the federal government becomes our partner or gets out of the way.” At issue is the waiver Calif. and 11 other states need from the EPA […]

This Sounds Like a Job For … Nobody

Workaholics, especially American ones, are ruining the planet Now here’s a theory we can get behind: workaholism is ruining the earth. “We are proudly breaking our backs to decrease the carrying capacity of the planet,” says Conrad Schmidt, proponent of the 32-hour work week, who declares that overwork leads to overconsumption, pollution, and less fulfilling […]

The Tête Offensive

French eco-groups get face time with new president Nicolas Sarkozy is better known as a friend to big business than as a friend to the environment, but the newly elected French president is reaching out nonetheless. Yesterday, three days after taking office, he gathered representatives from nine green groups — along with the head of […]

Britney Was Ahead of Her Time

Some car seats leach toxic chemicals, says new report Car seats have joined baby bottles and bath toys on the ever-growing list of Evil Things You’re Subjecting Your Child To. The Michigan-based Ecology Center tested 62 models of tot-toters, finding that about a third can leach chemicals such as chlorine, bromine, and lead. The center, […]

For the Love of … You Know

Religious leaders urge Congress, Bush to act on climate change After millennia of mistrust and conflict, the world’s religions might be united by … climate change? In an open letter published today in two Capitol Hill newspapers, the leaders of more than 20 religious groups urged Congress and President Bush to act on the issue. […]