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Any Portugal in a Wind Storm

Portugal gives wind power a big bear hug; England gives it the finger Portugal is already building the world’s largest solar power plant; now, to make us feel even worse about ourselves, it’s planning a huge new project to more than double its wind-energy capacity. A contractor bid will be accepted by this summer for […]

Melts in Your South, Not in Your Plans

Antarctica ice sheets melting faster than expected Another day, another round of studies showing the world’s ice sheets melting faster than expected, another outbreak of indifference from the public, another resigned sigh from enviros, another bout of empty rhetoric from legislators. K, see you tomorrow! Oh, what, you want details? All right: The lucky ice […]

Nobody Undoes It Like Sara Lee

Industry-backed bill would overthrow state food-labeling laws Two hundred or more state laws requiring warning labels on foods — labels indicating the presence of, say, cancer- or birth-defect-causing ingredients — would get nixed under a bill debated yesterday in the U.S. House of Representatives. The legislation would preempt state food-labeling rules in favor of a […]

Academy Awards nominees include several green films

So what do perch, penguins, Pocahontas, and Participant Productions have in common (other than alliteration)? Oscar.

This Sunday night, the 78th Annual Academy Awards will feature a bevy of nominated films with environmental themes -- from pesky perch to egotistic energy execs to badgered, um, badgers.

If you couldn't care less about the movies and you're more into people watching, check out this week's Grist List to see what eco-swag green celebs will be receiving.

For the rest of you, the nominees are ...

Harp seals vs. Maritimers

Here is another poverty-related issue, from the Maritime Provinces of Canada -- especially the poorest of all provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador. The infamous slaughter of baby harp seals is set to begin again a bit later this month, on the ice off the Atlantic coast. Such organizations as Greenpeace [well, it looks as though GP's involvement is uncertain; you decide what that means; so let us leave them out of this for now] and the Humane Society of the United States are already in place to protest.

Another pair of celebrity-protesters are Paul McCartney and his wife Heather, great activists for animal rights. They arrived yesterday in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, with a retinue of helicopters, with the intention of observing the seals as closely as they can on the ice. The story on their visit, in yesterday's Globe and Mail, prompted a large number of comments from readers, the great majority of them very unfriendly indeed. Among the recurring themes were: Foreigners have no right to tell Canadians what to do; vegetarians are hypocrites; celebrity activists are hypocrites; Sir Paul is a hypocrite; the seal-slaughter is traditional; it is not inhumane; it is good for North Atlantic ecosystems.

Portraits of loss in the wake of Katrina

On a misty November morning in 2005, I was photographing in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward neighborhood a few blocks from where one of the levees had failed 10 weeks earlier. Squatting in a driveway in foul-smelling mud, adjusting the knobs on my camera, I stood up to stretch my back and noticed a man sitting […]

Portraits of loss in the wake of Katrina

It's impossible to forget the images of a hurricane-wrecked New Orleans and its victims that were beamed around the world in the immediate aftermath of the storm. But what did it look like when the TV crews left? Well, um, still bad. Seattle-area photographer Chris Jordan took his camera south this winter to see what the storm had wrought. The message he brings back with his photo essay: our choices matter more than we think.

Interior Wreckorating

Interior official says big oil-royalty giveaway was likely a mistake Remember that $7 billion to $9 billion in royalty payments that oil and gas companies won’t be sending to American taxpayers for leases on public land? Turns out it’s the result of an Interior Department mistake. Oopsie! According to testimony yesterday before a House subcommittee, […]

Personal Rapid Transit

I've oftened wished the bus would "appear" when I arrive at the bus stop. Such daydreaming often led to ideas about somehow combining personal vehicles and public transit. As usual, mine is not an original idea, as Jeremy Faludi over at WC points out:

Wouldn't it be nice to have a bus waiting for you every time you walked up to a stop? And wouldn't it be nice if the bus just went to your destination, without stopping anywhere else in between? The main reason people drive is for convenience like this. But if public transportation were as cheap as a bus and as convenient as a cab on roads with no traffic, why would anyone bother driving anymore? That's the idea behind "Personal Rapid Transit", an idea that's been around for forty years, but is still struggling to see the light of day.

What is PRT? This, according to Jeremy:

The basic idea is having an elevated track with personal-sized cars, only big enough for 2 to 4 people (and normally used for solo trips). Cars on the main track always go at full speed, with cars shunting off to side tracks for entry & exit at stations. These stations would be located a reasonably short distance from each other so users would never have to walk too far to get to a stop, and stations would always have empty cars waiting for the next user to arrive. This individualized service would be made possible by having all the vehicles automated--no human drivers in the system, just smart network-management software.

Head on over to WorldChanging to read more. What do y'all think?

Benzene There, Might Do That

New EPA regs would slash benzene emissions from cars by 2030 The Bush administration delighted enviros yesterday (yes, we just wrote that) by unveiling long-awaited proposals to cut toxic tailpipe emissions. Of course, it took a lawsuit to get the plan released, but why look a gift regulation in the mouth? According to the U.S. […]