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The Air Force is the country’s biggest purchaser of green power.

Sitting atop the EPA's "Top 25 Green Power Partners" is ...

Gettin’ Busy

U.S. business getting with it on climate change Talk about how the U.S. private sector is taking global warming seriously often flirts with wishful thinking. But we are nothing if not wishful. And flirty. So here goes: It looks like momentum is gathering in the U.S. business community to forthrightly address the issue of climate […]

Texaco to Ecuador: Have You Tried a Swiffer?

Texaco haunted by dirty legacy in Ecuador At a ChevronTexaco shareholder meeting today in California, Amazonian community leaders, celebrities, and activists will confront company officials, focusing attention anew on Texaco’s messy legacy in Ecuador. Twenty years of oil exploration in the nation left much of the western edge of the Amazon rainforest in ecological ruin […]

Ceci N’est Pas une Wipe

Disposable wipes not just for baby bums anymore The season of spring cleaning is upon us, and for many Americans that means taking to dirty surfaces with a few — or a few million — disposable wipes. With varieties specially made for scrubbing, dusting, disinfecting, and buffing everything from microwaves to granite countertops to leather […]

Moot Causes

Bush pushes refineries and nuke plants as solution to high energy prices Many analysts say high energy prices are the result of inefficient use of non-renewable resources. President Bush does not employ any of those analysts. In a speech today, he will propose to address the “root causes” of high energy prices by, um, increasing […]

Indoor ski slopes are the desert’s hot new thing

A while back, I wrote about indoor ski slopes blooming in countries including Japan, England, and the U.S. of A. Seems it's an upward trend: The United Arab Emirates has just joined the herringboning hordes. Yes, that's right, the world will soon have its first desert skiing area, thanks to enterprising developers in Dubai.

Will we end up in a world where all the snow and ice is gone, and the only way to ski is indoors, in the desert? Will the desert still be the desert? And in the meantime, how much power does it waste to run these mounds of gluttony?

Suddenly I feel like Andy Rooney.

An interview with actor and solar advocate Edward Norton

Edward Norton. Photo: WGBH. The world has known Edward Norton as a neo-Nazi skinhead, a lusty priest, a warbling romantic, Larry Flynt’s attorney, and Nelson Rockefeller. There is also a far less publicized role that Norton plays every day: a dyed-in-the-wool eco-devotee on the front lines of the renewable-energy movement. In 2003, Norton teamed up […]

The military base loophole?

Via the Oil Drum, I see that President Bush is "encouraging new oil refineries be built at closed military bases."

Speaking to small business leaders on Wednesday, Bush will call on federal agencies to encourage construction of new oil refineries at the sites of former military bases closed in recent years.

The agencies would work with states, local communities and potential investors to encourage the use of the sites, the administration officials said.

The lack of adequate refining capacity is frequently cited by experts as one reason why gasoline prices have surged dramatically in recent years. No new refineries have been built in recent years even though the demand for gasoline has risen.

Hmmm.

UPDATE: The Pentagon press release is out now, which indicates that this wasn't just some off-the-cuff remark.

Bring back freon?

Smokey Joe might try.

Blocking Johnson’s confirmation is, indeed, just politics.

I agree with pretty much everything in this National Review Online column (words I never thought I'd say) by Jonathan Adler. Democratic efforts to grandstand around Johnson's confirmation are, in fact, "nothing personal ... just politics."

Thing is, as I alluded to here, politics is not "just" anything. Particularly in our media-saturated environment, politics -- symbolism, optics, strategy, maneuvering-- is vital. What we need is for concerns about good ecological stewardship to gain political weight and cachet. Weakening environmental protections needs to have a political cost, if nothing else in public shaming. This is what helps us win significant individual battles.

The stalling of Johnson's confirmation is not significant on the substance, but it is an effective political gesture. Adler says Democrats are trying to "capitalize on the Bush administration's poor reputation on environmental policy," but I'd submit that such attempts wouldn't be very successful if that reputation were not, in fact, accurate. While the CHEERS study might not be that big a deal, it is true that the Bush EPA is terrible on pesticides. While Carper's legislation might not warrant a full study of its own, it is true that the studies the EPA has conducted on behalf of Bush's air regulations are heavily biased in favor of industry.

By stalling Johnson's (inevitable) confirmation, Democrats are drawing attention to legitimate areas of concern on the Bush EPA's record, and they're doing it in a flashy, high-profile way. They are trying to seize control of the news cycle, to cut through the clutter. Good for them.