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Coming at It From a New Anglo

U.K. Christian groups ally with eco-advocates to lobby on climate change Several Christian organizations in the U.K. have joined forces with environmental groups in a new alliance to “Stop Climate Chaos.” The coalition is pressuring the British government to make cutting greenhouse-gas emissions a domestic and international priority and to support international aid and development […]

Ape Fear

New plan aims to save endangered great apes of Africa Conservationists are angling to raise $30 million to stop gorillas and chimpanzees from going extinct in the wild within a human generation. The U.N. Environment Program’s just-released “World Atlas of Great Apes and Their Conservation” reveals a poor prognosis for the survival of gorilla and […]

Rays and Confused

Partisan divide stalls California’s solar-roofs bill As its initial bipartisan support devolves into a partisan food fight, California’s Million Solar Roofs legislation may die on the vine. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) withdrew his formerly enthusiastic backing for the bill — which could put $2 billion toward solar-energy generation by 2019 — after Assembly Democrats inserted […]

Good reads

Billmon on the environmental madness revealed by Katrina.

Also Ari Kelman on New Orleans' grim environmental history.

Gays destroy New Orleans

Saying that global warming "caused" Hurricane Katrina is pretty stupid.

No, clearly what caused Katrina is God's anger at homosexuals. Thanks a lot, gays!

(via Think Progress)

Umbra on offsetting emissions from flatulence

Dear Umbra, I was wondering if there is any information about the average CO2 emissions from human flatulence. My friend (and I really do mean my friend, I’m not just trying to hide that it’s for me) has a birthday coming up, and I think it would be a fun and meaningful gift to get […]

CAFE standards and gas taxes are not the only choices

My own take on CAFE standards is roughly Kevin Drum's: There's no need to think of CAFE standards and gas taxes as an either/or choice. And you can probably get more done with both than with either alone.

In fact, there's reason to believe that gas taxes wouldn't raise efficiency as effectively as CAFE standards. Consumers typically undervalue the benefits of fuel efficiency -- they only take a few years worth of gas savings into account when buying a car, even if they plan on holding onto the car for much longer. That's not necessarily rational, but it's apparently human (or at least American) nature. And it means that fuel taxes probably would need to be really steep to get the same result as CAFE standards.

Now, as long as we're dreaming about conservation policy, there are two ideas that get much less attention than either gas taxes or CAFE standards, but that could be far more effective than either.

CAFE standards reduce fuel use, but increase the total amount of miles driven

A point of clarification about CAFE standards, apropos of Dave's post below.

According to this report (careful, it's a pdf) from the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, increasing CAFE standards would, in fact, save fuel (contrary to the claims of this this moronic article). The problem is that more fuel-efficient cars are also cheaper to drive. And that would mean that CAFE standards, even as they save fuel, would also slightly increase the number of miles people drive.

Now, driving obviously has all sorts of "externalities" -- costs that are borne by someone other than the driver. Some of the externalities are related to fuel consumption and the resultant air emissions; CAFE standards do help reduce those problems. But extra driving also means more car crashes, more congestion, more noise pollution, more risks for walkers and bikers, higher rates of obesity, lower rates of physical activity, more expenses for road building and maintenance, and so on.

So in simple terms, all the bad stuff that comes along with extra driving would overwhelm the good stuff that comes from consuming less fuel. Yes, we'd import a bit less oil, but we'd get in more crashes, build more roads, sprawl a little more, etc. And the human and environmental costs of all those other things (according to the VTPI report, at least) outweigh the good that's done by raising CAFE standards.

I don't think that's reason not to have CAFE standards. But it is reason to be very careful about what other policies you have in place that would help soften those unintended consequences.

How McIntyre got famous

One of the very few front-page stories The Wall Street Journal has ever run on global warming was about the work of an obscure semi-retired businessman named Stephen McIntyre. Said work criticized the infamous climate-change "hockey stick." The story catapulted McIntyre -- who was and is regarded as a bit of a kook among actual climate scientists -- to fame, and he's since been lauded by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tx) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla).

Inquiring minds want to know: WTF?

Paul Thacker has the back story.

Update [2005-10-11 14:59:40 by David Roberts]: Antonio Regalado from the WSJ wrote to inform me that the above is inaccurate -- the WSJ has in fact printed several page one stories on climate change (his unscientific survey turned up 14). Consider me chastened and corrected.

On green building, urban development, and reviving rural America

This is part two of a three-part interview. You can read part one here and part three here.

In this section, Alex and I discuss green building, urban development, and reviving rural America.