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The Station Agent

Chicago Tribune series traces a gasoline fill-up to its source Told that tracking gasoline from a single gas station back to its sources was impossible, reporter Paul Salopek did it anyway. In compiling a multimedia series for the Chicago Tribune, Salopek sourced gas dispensed at a Marathon station in South Elgin, Ill., to the Gulf […]

Are the world’s green-biz supermen losing their powers?

It’s early yet to begin writing the business obituary of long-standing BP CEO Lord John Browne, slated to retire in 2008. But the man once billed as the closest thing to a green Superman has had his cape singed recently. Have we been duped? Could anyone reading BP’s annual sustainability reports the last few years […]

Leaders agree to share technology; carbon-trading system a possibility, not a done deal

The AP overstated the extent of the climate agreement announced today between British PM Tony Blair and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (and thus Daily Grist overstated it too). Now that the deal's been officially unveiled, a few clarifications:

The two didn't agree to launch a new trans-Atlantic carbon-trading market, though they will look into the possibility. Rather, they said the U.K. and California would cooperate on research into cleaner fuels and technologies. Writes the San Francisco Chronicle, "aspects of the agreement include jointly studying the economic impacts of global climate change, collaborating on technology research -- including studying the effects of California's effort to create a 'hydrogen highway' touted by Schwarzenegger -- and establishing regular exchanges between scientists in both places." Not so bold, but a nice symbolic gesture at least.

Sub Pop Records offsets energy use

As Grist's unofficial music correspondent, I feel compelled to share this exciting news with you: Sub Pop Records announced today that they have partnered with Bonneville Environmental Foundation to purchase enough Green-e certified Green Tags to offset 100 percent of the company's energy use.

Based in Seattle, Sub Pop Records has worked with bands ranging from Nirvana and Soundgarden (when they were relatively unknown) to The Postal Service, The Shins, Iron and Wine, and others.

"Sub Pop has been synonymous with helping talented new artists support their passion for creating music," said Patrick Nye, director of sales at Bonneville Environmental Foundation. "Now, Sub Pop Records is directing the same energy toward new, renewable sources of power."

Rock on.

“What if I just start snorting baking powder instead?”

Speaking of sequestration: The journal Science points out today that even if we can sequester carbon dioxide, it may have bad side effects -- like, say, poisoning our drinking water. Brilliant.

So the engineering problems for CO2 sequestration are immense, it won't work with existing plants, and even if it works some time in the indefinite future, it might still kill us all. So of course, this is a serious option being discussed by many in Canadian politics and punditry.

Selfishness

I was somewhat dismayed to hear that environmentalism can only save itself by explicitly becoming "selfish" and "cool." (Or is there a difference?)

I was even more dismayed to find that Grist is, apparently, the house organ for this line of thinking:

Just plane frustrating

In a typical year, my family's biggest source of CO2 emissions is -- by quite a wide margin -- air travel. We use less gasoline than a typical American family, but we more than make up for it by traveling long distances to visit our family, scattered around the east and west coasts.

A few years back, I started strategizing about how to reduce our air travel. And I settled on a two-step plan.

• Step one: convince my sister to move from San Jose, CA to Seattle -- which would not only mean that we could see much more of each other, but also save our families at least 8 round trips per year (4 for her family, 4 for mine).
• Step two: give up traveling to see our east coast family for a year, and vacation close to home -- saving at least one cross-country round trip flight for our family of 4.

So this year, we put both steps into action. My sister and her family will be moving into our neighborhood (yay!) and we decided to go car camping rather than traveling to the east coast. We'll be flying a lot less as a result.

But as things have turned out, I'm not sure our plans have saved a single drop of fuel.

Auto X-Prize

The same folks that put up $10 million for the first private vehicle to enter suborbital space are at it again, this time for something less pie-in-the-sky: a prize for a super-efficient, low-emission vehicle.

Let's hope they are just as successful this time.

Check out the details, in development, here.

Picking the right horse

Michael G. Richard goes through the relevant chapter of Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers and pulls out a series of points and arguments that add up to this: carbon sequestration is unlikely to play a major role in our fight against global warming. (I basically agree -- see this post.) Give it a read.

I have just one quibble. Richard says:

As a society civilization species, we must back the right horse and stop being misled by the coal industry's delaying tactics. There's a big opportunity cost in time and resources to going down the wrong path.

I would question the notion that we need to "pick the right horse."

AEI and AR/4

Climate scientist Andrew Dessler has started a blog (join ... usss ...).

Today he brings word that the American Enterprise Institute -- a right-wing think tank famous for housing warmongers -- is offering $10,000 (PDF) to anyone who can write a cogent critique of the coming Fourth Assessment Report from the IPCC (or as everyone cool calls it, AR/4).

Dessler seems to think that the amount of the award and the recipients of the offer indicate a seriousness of purpose on AEI's part, but ... color me skeptical. The IPCC is going to be a huge media event. Everyone will be talking about it, at least for a week or two. 'Wingers will need something they can point to and say, "oh, look, that's been refuted." They won't particularly know or care whether the alleged refutation is valid. They just need it to exist. They just need a URL. That's what AEI appears to be purchasing with their $10K.

But we'll see.