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This is a much more significant story than it might appear at first glance: Brazil’s government said it will provide free Internet access to native Indian tribes in the Amazon in an effort to help protect the world’s biggest rain forest. The environment and communications ministers signed an agreement Thursday with the Forest People’s Network […]

Dave Morris summary on problems with carbon trading

Dave Morris: "Problems with Carbon Trading."

An outline of his argument:

1. Buying offsets encourages complacency.
2. Carbon trading is inherently susceptible to fraud and manipulation.
3. Carbon trading encourages cheating and rewards low-cost cosmetic changes while undermining higher cost innovation.
4. Carbon trading separates authority and responsibility, undermining coherent, holistic, community-based efforts.
5. We have alternatives -- carbon taxes, and caps without trading.

Read the whole thing.

The Hill’s Not Alive With the Sound of Music

Gore climate concert kicked off of Capitol grounds In a decision that sent discordant music wafting toward Al Gore’s ears, a group of Republican senators has put the kibosh on using the Capitol grounds for a gigantic climate-change-awareness concert this summer. The group — led, not surprisingly, by climate skeptic James Inhofe (R-Okla.) — blocked […]

A Fine Discovery

Some coral may be resistant to acidification, reefs still doomed The world’s oceans are on track to be more acidic by 2100 than they’ve been for 20 million years, thanks to our fiendish friend carbon dioxide. But research by Israeli scientists shows that the coral polyps living in underwater reefs may be able to survive, […]

Alternative School

U.S. college students are, like, totally into clean energy In answer to the loathed question “What are you going to do after you graduate?” gaggles of U.S. college students are looking into careers in alternative energy. (A group of college students is called a gaggle, right?) Green technology is having a heyday in schools from […]

And the Miliband Played On

Despite talk of cuts, U.K. carbon emissions on the rise It’s too bad surging emissions aren’t cause for joy. Because then the Brits would be dancing right now instead of tearing each other new ones. But alas: data show that U.K. carbon emissions rose 1.25 percent last year, to the highest level since the Labor […]

Say what?

CNN: Global warming “could create opportunities for pharmaceutical, chemical, biotech and healthcare companies, but present serious challenges for paper, agriculture, furniture, energy and the overall economy.” Too bad for you suckers who invested in Overall Economy Inc.!

But does he have to use the word ‘solartopia’?

This short piece from Harvey Wasserman gets pretty much everything right — and by "right" I mean, "in agreement with me." My only quibble is that he spends too much time bashing nukes, and bashing them for the wrong reasons (wrong effective-messaging-wise, not necessarily substance-wise). I’d prefer he bash them because they’re more expensive and […]

The man blocks Gore’s concert on the Capitol steps

One of the many stories I missed today: Sen. James Inhofe, in a characteristically petty display of foot-stomping, is blocking Al Gore’s efforts to have one of his Live Earth concerts on the Capitol steps. Inhofe says it’s partisan. Guess it is now. Some good quotes: Noting that many political events — including the 1990 […]

We need to rethink all food based biofuels

The lion's share of biofuel bashing on Grist deals with corn ethanol, because we Americans primarily use gasoline for our cars and ethanol runs fine in them, with few modifications. However, our pals in Europe drive a lot of diesel cars and the biofuel crisis over there revolves primarily around biodiesel. I think it is time we recognize that their problem is also our problem. A comment from Pcarbo alerted me to Monbiot's latest take on biofuels. He has now gone so far as to propose a ...

... moratorium on all targets and incentives for biofuels, until a second generation of fuels can be produced for less than it costs to make fuel from palm oil or sugar cane.