Latest Articles

Year of the Draggin’

China had a cruddy eco-year, still sees big picture more clearly than the U.S. In China, officials are assessing their 2006 eco-successes. The short version: there were none. The somewhat longer version: the country saw a pollution-related accident roughly every two days. Officials got 600,000 environmental complaints, 30 percent more than in 2005. Goals to […]

Haul Out the Halter Tops

It’s official: 2006 was warmest year ever for the contiguous U.S. In 2006, the contiguous U.S. experienced its warmest year since records began in 1895 (also the year of the first volleyball game — who knew?). Every state in the Lower 48 had average temperatures above, well, average; New Jersey hit its highest temperature ever. […]

Frosty the No Man

Washington school board puts a moratorium on An Inconvenient Truth First sex, now science? What will they tell the kids about next? The parents of a high-schooler in Federal Way, Wash., have complained to the district’s school board about a teacher’s plan to screen Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and the board has put a […]

All Heil Breaks Loose

Six decades after World War II, Nazi U-boat poses threat to Norway What’s scarier than a Nazi U-boat slinking along your shores? A Nazi U-boat sunk along your shores, with 65 tons of mercury still inside. In coastal Norway, residents are keeping a wary eye on a 62-year-old casualty of war that could pose a […]

Mayor May Not

Report questions whether many U.S. cities will meet Kyoto targets The carbon-reduction blame game isn’t limited to the federal level: nearly 360 U.S. mayors vowed that their cities would meet Kyoto Protocol standards, but a sampling of 10 cities reveals that they are not on track to accomplish their goals, according to a new report. […]

Report casts doubt

A new report questions whether the 358 U.S. cities that pledged to meet Kyoto's targets will be successful. That's a fine question, but it's perhaps easy to misconstrue as an implicit criticism that the promises were meaningless.

There is every reason to think that the cities can meet the targets. (And, heck, the pledge is only 18 months old!) Portland, in fact, is already well on its way.

What the report should serve to highlight is this:

Not what it sounds like

From TP: Former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) was named the ranking member of the House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee yesterday. "The Democrats in the Senate have signaled they’re going to make climate change a big issue," said Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. "We need to have […]

We will wonk you

DR: You’re a big supporter of hydrogen, which is a storage medium for electrical energy. Moving our transportation infrastructure to hydrogen means offloading the power burden from oil and liquid fuels to electricity sources — predominantly natural gas and coal. How is that an environmental gain, to go from oil to coal? TT: It isn’t, […]

China and India have joined Kyoto, they just have different obligations, as is morally appropriate

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: Why should the U.S. join Kyoto while India and China haven't?

Answer: The U.S. puts out more CO2 than any other nation on earth, including China and India, by a large margin. Considering the relative populations (a billion-plus each for China and India versus 300 million in the U.S.), per capita emissions in the U.S. are many times larger. This has been true for the past 100-plus years of CO2 pollution.

For the U.S. to refuse to take any steps until India and China do the same is like the fattest man at the table, upon realizing the food is running out, demanding that the hungry people who just sat down cut back just as much as him, at the same time.

Tom Friedman, erstwhile Great Green Hope

Tom Friedman of the NYT gets a lot of love around here as the green movement’s great popularizer, someone whose plain-spoken pronouncements can convince politicians and plain folks alike to act on climate change, etc. So what’s up with the so-called Mustache of Understanding puffing vigorously into his rhetorical trumpet (sub. required) in favor of […]