Latest Articles

Skating arenas can be bad for your health

I avoid ice skating at all costs, because I value my tailbone. And now I have all the more reason to stay home, as a CBC News investigation finds that ice-resurfacing machines in hockey and skating arenas can spew particulate matter to a health-endangering extent. At 14 percent of arenas studied across Canada, skaters were […]

You can help

If you live in Maryland and you care about solar energy, well, you are in luck. We've got an opportunity for you to make a difference.

Today, a huge solar bill passed out of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Economic Committee in the Maryland legislature. It now faces a floor vote. You can help it become reality.

HB 1016/SB 595 would amend the state's renewable portfolio standard to add a 1,800 MW solar program. That would put it in the top tier of solar states, and go a long way towards jumpstarting the solar industry. It's a game changer.

Read about it and take action here.

The Gore wants half a million missives sent to Congress

Help Al Gore Send a Message to Congress tomorrow! (Not sure what this actually accomplishes, but hey, do it for Dreamy Al. He wants to reach 500,000.)

Tough new climate targets are all the rage in the Britain and Europe

Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.

Things are hotting-up over here on climate change. And I'm not talking about the fact that we're set to have the warmest year on record. The political temperature is rising, too.

The European Union has agreed to a joint CO2 target for its 27 member countries and their 490 million citizens. The leaders committed to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020. But this is just a starter. The E.U. says that if other countries -- such as the U.S. -- agree to do more, we will up our target to 30 percent. So, we have 20 percent on the table unilaterally, with a chunk more if you guys step up to the plate.

Then, the U.K. government published a draft climate-change bill, which will make us the first country in the world to set legally binding carbon targets.

The bill will set U.K.'s targets -- for a 60 percent reduction by 2050 and around a 30 percent reduction by 2020 -- in statute. It will also bring in a new system of legally binding five-year "carbon budgets." These will provide clarity on whether the U.K. is on the right path to meet its commitments. There will be a new independent advisory and scrutiny body, the Committee on Climate Change, annually reporting to Parliament on progress.

Mooney on Waxman hearing

Here’s Chris Mooney’s promised post on the "new revelations" from Waxman’s hearing yesterday. From what I can tell, the big revelation is that NASA press hacks did, indeed, try to block Hansen from giving an interview to NPR. But we mostly knew that, right? And given how spectacularly failed the effort to silence Hansen was […]

Nope, still hunting

Hunting is, as this article demonstrates. There will always be tensions between hunters and environmentalists (not that they can't collaborate), but hopefully, the major groups can agree that ending sport hunting of polar bears is something we should do ASAP.

Not just a green issue, but certainly it is one

Matthew Yglesias, in The American Prospect:

The time is right, wonkish Washington seems to feel, for ambitious new thinking, for new grand bargains, for new initiatives and big ideas. I'm just wondering why.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but: Don't you know there's a war on? Or, rather, two -- one in Iraq, one in Afghanistan -- and the United States is losing both.

Read the interview!

I hope that everyone will take some time and head over to read my interview with Van Jones, civil rights lawyer, founder and director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and rising star of progressive activism. His message is that largely white, affluent "eco-elites" need to broaden their coalition by reaching out to […]

Report from India

Daphne Wysham, co-director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network sends the following from Angul, Orissa, the heart of India's Coal Belt, on March 15, 2007:

The smell of burning coal in household fires hangs in the air. Bicyclists carry heavy bags of coal from the mines to sell for a few rupees. They are overtaken by huge lorries carrying more than the tonnage they are supposed to carry -- all part of the black market in coal -- down busy streets, with cattle lying nonchalantly on the road.

We visited communities that were literally on the edge of the coal mines, who had nowhere else to go, having received no compensation for their land, taken by the coal companies and the World Bank. In the heat of the summer they tell us, the temperature in these communities can reach over 130 degrees F. Spontaneous combustion of coal in the open-pit mines cannot be extinguished. Water is polluted and far away. Health care and education is non-existent. Heavy energy-intensive industry is everywhere in Angul: aluminum smelters, steel mills, sponge iron factories.

As we drove to a village on the outskirts of the dirtiest aluminum smelter in the country, Nalco, we were forced to stop as a parade of men dressed in bright orange dress, paint on their faces, were banging drums and cymbals, celebrating the festival of holi, the arrival of spring. They celebrate in colorful garb in their villages as they do every spring although just down the road, on the outskirts of the state-owned Nalco smelter, their cattle are dying in droves from bone-crippling fluorosis -- caused by the excessive fluoride produced from smelting aluminum -- and other undiagnosed diseases.

The people and animals have small tumors on their bodies; the women complain of arthritis-like symptoms and swollen joints that make it hard to do their daily work; the children show signs of genetic malformations. One boy we saw had seven fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot. Another boy was deaf and retarded, his teeth also weakened, possibly by the fluoride. All the malformed children were born after the aluminum smelter was established here. Many of the women cannot be married if the men learn where they are from; similarly, cattle cannot be sold from this community. it is well-known that here a severe poisoning has taken place at the hands of Nalco.

New articles take a look

Interesting piece from Makower on some recent articles moving the climate conversation to more … prosaic concerns. That is to say: who’s gonna make out? The first is in the Harvard Business Review, and outlines these risks to businesses: … regulatory risk (the impact of emissions caps or carbon taxes); supply chain risk (disruptions or […]