Latest Articles

Al Gore’s movie booted by wacky school board

Congrats to Seattle P-I enviro reporters Robert McClure and Lisa Stiffler for unearthing the funniest story I’ve read in a good long while. Here’s the nut: The school board in Federal Way, a southern exurb of Seattle, just put a "moratorium" on showings of An Inconvenient Truth, based largely on the complaints of one parent, […]

Times reports on vegan fashion

The Times reports on cruelty-free fashion today. Not that any of us can afford this stuff. But still. Just saying. It’s there. And we’re glad of it. But could this bring eco-fashion to the fashion-conscious masses? And could it signal the end of Summer Rayne Oakes’ unchallenged hegemony in the sphere of eco-fashion?

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, […]