Latest Articles

Umbra on electric cars

Dearest Umbra, Why are electric cars considered so great? They don’t pollute the air where they are driven. But certainly when they are plugged in they use energy from a power plant, which does pollute and also contributes to global warming. Doesn’t this just move the pollution from one area to another? Then you have […]

Olympic swimmer breaks own world record

Am I the only one who thinks world record titles should be reserved for people that actually have a skill? I'm not impressed by the fastest tomato ketchup drinker (Dustin Phillips) or the largest group hug (6,623 participants). And I really don't care who the most overrated celebrity is (Paris Hilton -- big surprise).

What does interest me are athletes that excel at their sport to such a degree that if they weren't videotaped, we wouldn't believe it. Athletes like Aaron Peirsol.

Be Careful What You Don’t Wish For

FBI investigates Illinois environmental activist Add Jim Bensman of Alton, Ill., to your ever-growing list of People the Feds Think You Should Fear. Mild-mannered Bensman is a coordinator with an environmental group (terror level yellow!). In late July, he attended an Army Corps of Engineers public meeting on the proposed construction of a fish-bypass channel […]

Is It Frogs Next, or Locusts?

Warmer climate could lead to increased bubonic plague Ever feel like we live in End Times? Well, you may be right. Apparently, in coming years we can expect more bubonic plague — yes, plague, as in “bring out your dead!” Researchers publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that a rise […]

A Breyer Power

Federal judge rejects Forest Service plan to log in national monument A federal judge put the smackdown yesterday on a U.S. Forest Service plan to allow increased logging in California’s Giant Sequoia National Monument, home to about two-thirds of the world’s largest trees. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the USFS forest management plan lacked […]

Big buyers make organic farmers feel smaller than ever

With Whole Foods continuing to dazzle Wall Street with its growth and Wal-Mart vowing to become the world’s No. 1 organic grocer, now would seem to be a wonderful time to be an organic farmer — particularly one with enough acreage to supply the corporate giants. According to classical economics, when demand jumps, supply should […]

Wedging our carbon bets

The current issue of Scientific American -- "Energy's Future: Beyond Carbon" (sorry, full text is subscription only) -- features a series of articles on that topic by experts in the fields of energy research, transportation, ecology, and urban planning.

The first piece, "A Plan to Keep Carbon in Check," is a reader-friendly rehash of an outstanding paper by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala that originally appeared in Science in 2004. That paper, deftly summarized by Jamais Cascio of Worldchanging, presents a long-term carbon reduction strategy in the form of "stabilization wedges" -- each representing one billion tons a year of averted emissions.

A cool pie chart in the SciAm version shows 15 possible technologies, ranging from increased fuel economy to stopping deforestation, that the authors say could flatten out CO2 emissions by 2056. And Pacala and Socolow are decidedly optimistic about our ability to do this: "Holding CO2 emissions in 2056 to their present rate, without choking off economic growth, is a desirable outcome within our grasp."

California’s Million Solar Roofs bill signed into law

SB 1, California's Million Solar Roofs bill, was signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger yesterday. For those new to the story, this bill -- which some have called humankind's last, best hope for surviving global warming -- failed to pass out of the legislature three years running, until the California Public Utilities Commission enacted the meat of the measure -- $3.2 billion in rebates for one million solar roofs -- through a regulatory process last January. This bill codifies that funding into legislation, and fills in several very important missing pieces. Namely:

Tell me something

What is the thought process that leads someone to think that, at this particular moment in history, the most important thing to devote one's energy to is policing the environmental community to make sure they don't exaggerate or shade facts or use unnecessarily shrill language?

I mean, I can see calling that stuff out when you come across it. But making it your shtick?

It's as though Hitler were invading France and someone spent their time publishing pamphlets scolding Allied soldiers for their bad posture.

Hurricane director thinks coastal-dwellers are morons

The coast is no longer where it's at, if for no other reason than the potential for mega-disaster. Says Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, "as long as we continue to develop the coastline like we are, we're setting up for disaster."

He might as well be whispering into a gale-force wind for all the good it'll do. We seem determined to screw ourselves over, on this and many other counts. But good for him for speaking up.