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The Royal Whee

U.K. greens grin as climate bill unveiled in annual “queen’s speech” We thought wigs and rowdiness were the most delightful customs in the British Parliament, but it turns out there’s another: the annual “queen’s speech.” This opening-day tradition offers a chance to boast about the things Parliament will accomplish in the coming session. And this […]

Demand in the Roughy

Deep-sea trawling puts ecosystems in deep trouble, says U.N. report Deep-sea trawling is bad. How bad? Uh, pretty bad. Turns out raking gigantic fishing nets across the ocean floor shatters millennia-old coral, raises smothering clouds of sediment, and destroys underwater mountains. “It’s the equivalent of clearing old-growth forest to collect squirrels,” says researcher Alex Rogers, […]

You Are What You Eat

Fast Food Nation movie opens, and we talk with author Eric Schlosser There was a time when Eric Schlosser took his kids out for fast food. But once he started researching an article on the industry, all that changed. The article turned into a widely acclaimed book, Fast Food Nation, which has now been turned […]

Franklin, My Dear, I Do Give a Damn

Pennsylvania plan would cut mercury emissions 90 percent in nine years If a plan approved by a state board yesterday makes it through 14 days of withering stares from the legislature, Pennsylvania will join the cadre of states enacting tougher environmental rules than the feds. The controversial plan, which aims to cut mercury emissions 90 […]

It’s an important addition to the REC debate

Building Green, publisher of Environmental Buildings News and GreenSpec, just released their top 10 green building products for 2006, and Community Energy's Renewable Energy Credits made the list. Although not directly related to the "kerfuffle" about the Whole Foods/Renewable Choice Card, this is important to the REC debate for a couple of reasons.

1. EBN is one of the most respected sources of information on green building, and they feel RECs are worthwhile. To me this is a huge vote of confidence in RECs as part of overall environmental sustainability efforts.
2. RECs are not strictly a building product, but a service choice, yet purchasing RECs can make a huge dent in a building's lifecycle impact. Typically, RECs receive relatively little attention, because they are not as sexy as other options such as solar panels or salvaged-timber bathroom partitions. Adding RECs to a list of important green products broadens people's perspectives on what green building can be. For example, this highlights that you don't have to build a new building or undergo a major renovation to green your buildings, but you can start right away with RECs.

‘Peiser refuted Oreskes’–In a poor piece of work that has been retracted by its author

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

Objection: Sure, Oreskes found no one bucking the consensus, but her paper was refuted by Benny Peiser, who did the exact same survey and found very different results.

Answer: True, Benny Peiser did attempt a similar study and submitted it as a letter to Science responding to the Oreskes study. But for very good reasons, it was not published.

Peiser claimed to find 34 articles in his "reject or doubt the consensus view" category. That's 3 percent of the total, so even taken at face value it doesn't cast much doubt on the consensus. But it is greater than the 0 percent Oreskes found, and serves as ammunition for the "there is no consensus" crowd.

The film opens nationwide Friday

Find out what author Eric Schlosser has to say about the film.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I sat down in the mostly empty theater for the press screening of Fast Food Nation last month. The book is fascinating ... but fact-heavy and not character-driven. I knew this movie was a narrative, following the lives of fictional workers producing (and marketing and serving and eating) food at fictional fast-food chain "Mickey's." I had seen the trailer featuring Little Miss Sunshine cutie Paul Dano serving a "Big One" from off the prep-room floor and Greg Kinnear getting a whiff of "smoky meat" flavoring. I thought the movie might even be a comedy.

But I left the theater feeling like I had seen a horror film. During many of the meat-packing scenes, the gore-level was on par with something like Saw III. (Or I would assume, anyway -- my eyes were closed during the most gruesome scenes. And I've never seen Saw III ... but both involve large saws.) The scariest part about the film, though, is that -- to the best of Eric Schlosser's and Richard Linklater's screenwriting abilities -- it accurately portrays the fast-food industry.

What’s the real cost of climate change, and where do all those numbers come from?

As serious governments shift the climate-change debate from whether the phenomenon exists to the best means to combat it, one of the first things officials want to know is how much economic damage it will cause — and how much measures to fight it might cost. It is the trillion-dollar question, and figures are flying […]

A dispatch from an eco-showroom evening full of luxurious goods

Emily Gertz is an environmental journalist based in Brooklyn, N.Y., who has contributed to Grist, Plenty, WorldChanging, and other independent publications, and blogs at OneAtlantic.net. Emily Gertz. Thursday, 16 Nov 2006 New York, N.Y. I want to believe. I want to believe that we can create an ecologically sustainable and socio-economically just future for the […]

No, really

Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) recently released a report called Why the "Peak Oil" Theory Falls Down -- Myths, Legends and the Future of Oil Resources. It's getting a lot of attention, and has produced much consternation in the peakoilosphere.

The definitive response, as usual, is on The Oil Drum.

I must say, the more I read about peak oil, the less complicated the whole thing seems to me. That may sound crazy, since everyone involved in discussions of oil prides themselves on their engineering acumen, impeccable logic, and devotion to empirical data (in the form of charts and graphs, of course!). Pull any one thread of the oil tapestry and you quickly uncover a skein of irreconcilably opposed viewpoints, all backed by reams of data, all contemptuous of the illogic and wishful thinking of the others.

So why do I think it's simple?