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Terminal Killness

City officials’ reluctance may halt LNG terminal in Long Beach, Calif. The debate over a $700 million liquefied-natural-gas terminal in Long Beach, Calif., may be coming to an end. City officials have long been squeamish about the proposed facility due to its proximity to the urban center. “It’s a risk for accident and terrorist attack, […]

We’ll Be In the Fallout Shelter

Regional nuclear war could create catastrophic global cooling, say scientists Not fully convinced that a nuclear war would suck? Perhaps this will do the trick: Scientists are reviving the “nuclear winter” fears of the 1980s, portending that even a small, regional nuke kerfuffle could trigger a devastating global cooling. Advanced computer models show that thick […]

To y’all readers, that is

On Nov. 30, we published an interview with Travis Bradford, author of Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry and founder of the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development.

The interview was reprinted on Alternet, where it kicked up a vigorous, extended discussion. I asked Travis if he'd like to respond to some of the themes and comments there. His thoughts follow.

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I was delighted to see so much serious discussion of solar and other renewable energy sources follow my interview with David Roberts. Many of the questions and ideas readers raised are addressed in much greater detail in my book. But I'd like to take a few moments to address some specific issues.

First, should the solar revolution -- which has already happened in Japan and Germany, and is well underway in other European countries and in California -- be centralized or localized?

Watch out for scary chemicals in plastic toys for tots

Umbra offered up a number of clever gift ideas for kids in her latest column, focusing particularly on experiences rather than things. But if you still want to do some thing-giving for those wee ones, you might first want to check out "What's Toxic In Toyland," an article by Margot Roosevelt in Time.

Congress prepares to soak the 2007 Farm Bill in ethanol, to the delight of agribiz.

"You can have Republicans and Democrats absolutely in lockstep agreement on certain issues in the farm bill, and it has nothing to do with parties. These issues tend to be commodity-driven," gushed USDA chief Mike Johanns.

Uh-oh. Looks like a good old-fashioned "bipartisan consensus" has formed: time to use the 2007 Farm Bill as a tool for maximizing ethanol production -- which evidently doesn't already draw enough government support.

Can U.S. corn farmers fill both bellies and tanks?

The boom in corn-based ethanol seems like good news for farmers, who suddenly face growing demand for their crop. But is there enough corn to go around? And will surging demand mean surging prices for consumers? Tom Philpott addresses the food vs. fuel debate in today's Victual Reality column, and Yolanda Crous talks to a farmer in Missouri who's an ethanol co-op board member. Also, as a wee digestif, we bring you a rundown of celebrity biofuels hitting the shelves soon. (OK, we completely made them up. What can we say -- two weeks of biofuels coverage would leave you a little punchy too.)

JibJab’s latest

The fellows at JibJab have put up their latest animation. It's a fairly apt and amusing summary of 2006, though I am surprised to see Al Gore and his movie escape mention:

Maybe, maybe not

This is why I love the Economist magazine. They take cutting edge issues and put a monkey wrench in conventional thinking.

Turns out, organic food is not always better for the environment, fair trade may actually exacerbate poverty in some circumstances, and buying local may be be less efficient than buying food shipped thousands of miles away sometimes.

Biofuel pioneer Lee Lynd points the way toward a “carbohydrate economy”

Well before cellulosic ethanol became the hot new fuel, Lee Lynd was immersed in it. Since 1987, the engineering professor has been leading a major academic study group on cellulosic ethanol from his perch at Dartmouth. Before that, he even wrote his undergraduate honors thesis on it. Lee Lynd. Photo: Joseph Mehling/Dartmouth More recently, Lynd […]

Grains become fuel at the world’s first cellulosic ethanol demo plant

Our plant supplants your plant: a real-life cellulosic ethanol refinery. Photo: Iogen Sometimes it seems virtually anything can be made into fuel. As though, if we had the right technology, we could throw together old T-shirts, bumper stickers, and pine cones to make a magical elixir to run the millions of cars on North America’s […]