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Have You Hugged Your Tree Today?

On Arbor Day, appreciate the trees Urban forest cover in many U.S. cities has declined about 30 percent over the past 10 to 15 years, according to the green group American Forests, and that’s just not cool. Literally: loss of trees means loss of shade, more AC, and higher energy costs. On Arbor Day (you […]

Throw in a Pony, and We’ll Talk

In lieu of real energy policy, senators propose sending people checks Apparently driven insane by high gasoline prices, congressfolk are reaching virtuosic heights of pandering and venality, approaching some sort of Platonic ideal of What’s Wrong With Politics These Days. Exhibit A: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) just unveiled a proposal that would bribe […]

Pollute Suit Riot

States sue EPA for not regulating CO2 Ten states have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. EPA over what has become a central point of contention between the feds and … people who have to live on the planet for the next 50 years: whether or not the agency has the authority to regulate planet-warming […]

Hypocrisy yet again

I really really really wish everyone would go read this post by Matt Yglesias, and then read it again. He's making a point that I've made many times before: the monomaniacal focus of pundits and (many) activists on hypocrisy makes neither substantive nor tactical sense.

Driving less is great, but producing more oil is a less-desirable reaction

In this post, David echoes what seems to be conventional eco-wisdom on high gas prices:

It's good that gas prices are rising. We want people to buy more fuel-efficient cars and drive less.

I'm not so certain.

More on Chafee, believe it or not

At the risk of beating a dead horse, let me return to this Chafee question one more time, from a slightly different angle. Yes, it will bore you.

Me and Al Gore

Next Tuesday, May 2, I'll be sitting down for a conversation with Al Gore, a man who, as they say in the biz, needs no introduction. We'll be speaking about his new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and related matters.

What should I ask him?

Should enviros view high gas prices as good news?

Like many environmentalists, I tend to think that gasoline prices -- even at today's wallet-rending heights -- are too low.

In fact, no matter how high the market price for petroleum goes, it ought to be higher, since it won't include the so-called "external costs" of using oil. For example, whenever I burn a gallon of gas in my car, I'm creating pollution and climate-warming emissions; fostering overseas military entanglements; increasing the risk of oil spills and pipeline leaks; siphoning money from the local economy into the bank accounts of unsavory oil magnates; yada yada. Each of those factors carries a cost -- sometimes intangible, often hard to quantify, but real nonetheless. And because I don't pay those costs when I fill up -- I just let the rest of the globe pick up the tab -- I tend to buy more gas than I otherwise would.

Chariots of Fire

After the pre-screening of An Inconvenient Truth last night in Washington, Al Gore told a crowd of think-tank denizens, activists, and media types that change in American history moves at two speeds: "slow and lightning." Recalling the Civil Rights era, he added, "When we see something as a moral issue, a lot of change can happen quickly."

Grappling with the implications of climate change as a moral issue is becoming more common. Earlier this year, the Evangelical Climate Initative issued their call to action, proclaiming, "Millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors." More recently, in March, John Podesta struck a similar note in a speech at Harvard on clean energy and global warming(PDF): "Beyond the price and the politics that are necessitating change, we, in the United States, have a moral obligation to change."

On different paradigm question, Gore made a key distinction after the film: The movie's animated clip of greenhouse-gas thugs pounding Mr. Sunbeam originated with Futurama, not the Simpsons.

Climate science, say hello to Decision Science

Recently, the issue of how to frame the global-warming debate has come up repeatedly. David sums it up here.

It's gotten me thinking about the confluence between climate science and decision science. Communicating about global warming can not be reduced to a simple up or down vote on the use of doom and gloom, or a tradeoff between bad science and a complete value change. In the end, how, when, and most importantly, why people start to seriously address global warming will be 1/10th about the climate science and 9/10ths about good ol' wacky human decision making.