Latest Articles
-
Conoco Your Own Way
First major U.S. oil company joins coalition to limit greenhouse gases You thought the times were a-changin’ in the ’60s? Meet 2007, baby! This week, ConocoPhillips became the first major U.S. oil company to join the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of green groups and corporations begging Congress to impose federal limits on greenhouse […]
-
Weird but true
Another blog that’s recently become required reading for me: Mode Shift, a blog on urban sustainability from Keith Schneider, founder of the Michigan Land Use Institute. Yesterday brought a somewhat surprising post on big plans afoot to make Knoxville, Tenn. (among other places) a model of sustainable, healthy living. Y’all may or may not know […]
-
This time, it’s personal
(Continued from parts I and II.)
Last but not least (actually, what quite literally hits closest to home!):
North America
-
Colorado soccer team first to go carbon neutral
The sporting news comes fast and furious! Yesterday, big names who are going eco. The day before, jolly green Giants. (And by “yesterday” and “the day before” I don’t mean sporty things actually happened those days — I just mean I got around to writing about them.) But! Timely news, from — doth mine ever-behind-the-times […]
-
Oh, the anticipation!
The IPCC report I’ve most been looking forward to is from Working Group III, on mitigation. It looks like drafts of that report are already leaking — Reuters has a (poorly written) rundown. From what I can tell through the muddy writing, the IPCC lays out a range of mitigation scenarios, which would run anywhere […]
-
A visual comparison
When the IPCC WGII summary was released last week, there were media reports on last-minute clashes between scientists and political types — the former pushing for the original strong language, the latter pushing to water it down. George Monbiot’s column yesterday addressed the subject, in characteristically outraged tones. For those interested in the details, DeSmogBlog […]
-
-
How to save the last carbon sinks
Marcel Silvius recently declared in the Herald Tribune that palm oil is a failure as a biofuel. Rhett Butler over at Mongabay thinks otherwise, as he argues in an article titled, um, "Palm oil is not a failure as a biofuel." His main point is that even if America and Europe were to reject palm oil biodiesel as inherently unsustainable, the forests would still be converted to palm oil by China. We can't stop its development by refusing to use it, so we (by "we" he means Europe) need to get in there and finance the establishment of sustainable practices now or we will have no say in the matter later. China will own the industry: -
Methane from landfills is hott
The Boston Globe has a nice article on a source of renewable electricity that doesn’t get nearly the attention it ought to: methane generated by landfills. This, like so many cogen opportunities, is a no-brainer.