Latest Articles

She Puts the Dud in Dudley

Bush appoints anti-regulation advocate as top regulatory official Mere days ago, we mentioned that President Bush might give Congress the runaround by making recess appointments of industry-tied folk to top environmentally related positions in his administration. Well, that didn’t take long. Meet Susan Dudley, the newly appointed head of the Office of Information and Regulatory […]

Greenpeace ranks Apple as least eco-friendly electronics firm

Are you reading this on a Mac? D’oh. A new Greenpeace report ranks Apple’s environmental record worst among 14 major electronics firms, based on use of hazardous chemicals in production and efforts to recycle products at the end of their lives. The iPod manufacturer was i-poohed for continuing to use several types of harmful chemicals, […]

Brooklyn bleg

It’s late to ask, I realize, but: my wife and I will be in Brooklyn for the next three or four days. Without children. Hooray! Our plan is to sleep in, and eat, and read. And maybe shop. And then sleep in some more. Aaah … Any suggestions about sites to see? Places to eat […]

Not if experience is any guide

A professor of mine once remarked that while the environmental movement is wide, it is also thin. Nowhere is this more evident than in national elections, where candidates focus almost exclusively on national security issues and bread-and-butter economic agendas. (In contrast, local and state elections often produce clear environmental mandates.)

Despite the perception that Democratic candidates place more of an emphasis on environmental issues, in 2000 Gore talked more about putting the social security surplus in a lockbox than he did about global warming, while in 2004 Kerry barely mentioned the environment or energy policy despite numerous opportunities and the obvious link between our addiction to Middle Eastern oil and terrorism.

Between the sheets in the Abramoff scandel

Italia Federici, the founder of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), is the latest target of investigation in the ongoing saga of Jack Abramoff (whose first name might as well be Disgraced Lobbyist), according to recent press reports. Federici, who at the time was dating the coal lobbyist turned Interior Department official J. […]

Corporatists overestimate environmental response costs every time

A friend sends an article from a legal publication that makes an important point about economists and other naysayers who insist that addressing global climate disruption will be too expensive. (Oddly, the same people always gassing on about boundless human potential when it comes to imagining new substitutes for depleting resources always forget to incorporate that creativity in their projections of the cost of fixing environmental problems.)

A key excerpt (my emphasis):

A great chef pimps his name for industrial food

Mario Batali is a great chef and restaurateur. I’ve never had the chance to eat at his celebrated restaurants Babbo and Del Posto, but I have eaten several times at Otto, his relatively modest pizza joint in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. The food there is very, very good. (Try the gelato — especially the incredibly delicate […]

Who are the green power leaders? NREL tells us

DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) yesterday released its annual ranking of leading utility green power programs:

Customer choice programs are proving to be a powerful stimulus for growth in renewable energy supply. In 2006, total utility green power sales exceeded 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), about a 30% increase over 2005. More than 500,000 customers are participating in utility programs nationwide, up more than 10% from 2005

Some highlights follow.

How can 3 percent be important?

Consider this argument often made by climate skeptics:

Water vapor is the most important gas, contributing 97 percent of the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide is only small percentage. Therefore, regulating carbon dioxide will have no impact on our climate.

WhileEven if these numbers are generally correct, there are lots of problems with this argument. For example, it disregards the fact that climate forcing by water is really a feedback, and that changes in carbon dioxide are amplified by the water vapor feedback.

Then there's this problem: the argument includes an implicit assumption that a small fractional change of any quantity is intrinsically unimportant. It might make intuitive sense: carbon dioxide is only 3 percent of total forcing, and how can 3 percent of anything be important?

Umbra on aluminum bottles

Umbra, Are aluminum bottles safer than Nalgene bottles? I’m looking at getting Sigg bottles for my self, wife, and son. Vendor agnostic, are the materials used by aluminum-only vendors safer than those that incorporate Lexan? Chris Webber Seattle, Wash. Dearest Chris, I swear, I pick questions and only then do I notice that yet again […]