Latest Articles
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‘Position statements hide debate’–True enough, but that is not the whole picture
(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)
Objection: All those institutional position statements are fine, but by their very nature they paper over debate and obscure the variety of individual positions. The real debate is in the scientific journals.
Answer: This is a fair point. Group position statements are designed to present a united front. The best indicator of what individual scientists think is in the current scientific literature, where new and different is the paramount value and scientists are free to express their own ideas, as long as they're supported by data and logic. What does the literature look like in terms of the climate debate? Sounds like a good topic for research.
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Press coverage of climate change is … changing
Am I the only one who senses a remarkable shift -- or, really, three shifts -- in how the press is covering climate change?
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Climate change lawsuits under NEPA
As I mentioned in a post last week, frustration with the political process has led many global warming advocates to turn to the courts. While I'm skeptical that the judiciary can solve the problem, it may be an important part of the solution.
While the Massachusetts case has dominated public attention to global warming litigation, it is only one of more than a dozen active cases seeking courts intervention. As outlined in a recent report by the Georgetown Environmental Law & Policy Institute (PDF), these cases roughly break down into four categories:
- Clean Air Act litigation (like the Massachusetts case),
- National Environmental Policy Act cases,
- common law nuisance suits, and
- industry challenges to state greenhouse gas regulations.
(For anyone interested, the report is both concise and accessible -- though that's just shameless advertising, since I wrote it.)
Today I'd like to discuss the second category: cases under the National Environmental Policy Act. As you may know, everything in environmental law has an acronym, sometimes making environmental lawyers unintelligible to the uninitiated. This Act goes by the relatively simple handle NEPA.
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How Sunpower plans to do it
Sunpower, a darling of the investor community, has the highest efficiency solar cells on the market. If you are interested in how they think they can reduce costs by 50% by 2012 and thereby reach grid parity -- that is to say, the point where solar is cost effective without subsidies -- listen here.
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Snow says Bush has made climate a priority. Yeah, right.
"[T]he President has made dealing with climate change a priority for this administration," said White House Press Secretary Tony Snow at yesterday's briefing.
Meanwhile, a German group has ranked 56 nations according to their efforts to fight climate change. Yes, look way down the list [PDF]:
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We Left Our Hearts in San Francisco
Grist’s reader party was fabulous, left us hungry for more Huge thanks to the more than 300 smart, savvy Gristians who came to our San Francisco reader party last week. Connections were made. Ideas were sparked. We even saw some shameless flirting going on. We had so much fun, we might come to your ‘hood […]
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No More McDonald’s For Them
French prime minister proposes an import tax on Kyoto-averse countries We’d like to preface this story on French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin with an amuse bouche: his name always makes us think of that Singing Nun tune from the ’60s, which led us to a lyrics site today, which featured the offer, “Send the […]
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The Charge of the Ultra-Light Brigade
CyberTran is the fastest, most convenient public transit you’ve never heard of What if there was a public transit system one-tenth the price of conventional light rail, available 24 hours a day within minutes, suitable for both urban centers and suburbs, safe and comfortable, and most important, faster than auto commuting? Think you’d prefer it […]
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Herd It Through the Decline
Climate change ravages land and livelihoods of Kenya’s nomadic herders As climate talks continue in Nairobi, Kenya, the world’s climate-change canaries aren’t far away. Severe floods in the country’s northern and coastal regions have killed more than 20 people and forced 60,000 to relocate over the last few weeks, and a flood-drought cycle is disrupting […]
