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Shock and Thaw

New Yorker launches three-part exploration of climate change Writer Elizabeth Kolbert must have single-handedly accelerated global warming with the jet fuel she burned visiting the Arctic, Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, and the Antarctic to research a big three-part series on climate change for The New Yorker. What did she find? Well, it’s all melting. The Alaskan […]

Allan Thornton, environmental investigator, answers questions

Allan Thornton. What work do you do? I run the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nonprofit environmental group with offices in Washington, D.C., and London. I generally oversee the strategic development of the organization, which includes targeting research, deploying investigative teams to obtain documentary evidence, and exposing environmental crimes; I work in close cooperation with our […]

Before Sunset

Language in budget bill could unravel federal environmental protections Buried deep in the 2,000-page budget bill President Bush recently sent to Congress is a three-sentence provision that threatens to eviscerate environmental and other protections. Authored by the White House Office of Management and Budget, the provision would, if passed unamended, subject any and all federal […]

Die, Death, die!

Good lord, are people still writing about this?

Flat Earth Award winner pens acceptance speech

File under Mildly Amusing:

We wrote a while back about the Flat Earth Award students at Middlebury College dreamt up to recognize the leading lights of the climate-change denialist movement. Nominated were Rush Limbaugh, Michael Crichton, and Fred Singer.

Well, on Earth Day it was announced that Singer won. Now he's been kind enough to pen an acceptance speech.

Author! Author!

Booker Prize-winning author Ian McEwan waxes poetic on climate change From 35,000 feet above the earth’s surface, you can see awe-inspiring views of vast, open spaces. Unless, that is, you’re flying over spots like Mexico City and Beijing, in which case you’ll see “a great rim of grime — as though detached from an unwashed […]

Congress pours more money down the “clean coal” drain

Just another of the many lovely turds that the House has inserted into the energy bill:

Years ago, the federal government spent $117 million on an experimental "clean coal" power plant in Alaska designed to generate electricity with a minimum of air pollution -- but the project never got up and running.

The plant, built in the late 1990s just outside Denali National Park and Preserve, never worked as it was supposed to, cost too much to operate and provided power only intermittently when it was tested, according to the utility company that was supposed to run it. Five years ago, the state closed it down.

Last week, the House came up with a solution: spend an additional $125 million in the form of government loans to convert the experimental "clean coal" facility into something that works.

Read the rest.

Altogether, there is about $1.8 billion in the House energy bill for research into "clean coal" technology. There's no doubt that coal is going to have to be a major part of America's energy future, but I'm deeply skeptical. We may simply be paying for more screwups like the one in Alaska.

If the Bush administration and the GOP Congress were serious about emissions from coal-fired power plants, it wouldn't have torched New Source Review and gutted the EPA's enforcement division.

NOW segment on global warming gets us all fired up again

So I watched Friday's NOW segment about climate change, and I'm fired up again after being somewhat discouraged for the last few years about the political atmosphere surrounding this issue. I'm also convinced that pressure to take action to reduce carbon emissions is ultimately going to have to come from the business community itself, as the reinsurance industry and other risk-averse sectors make their voices (and financial clout) heard. The utility company executive featured on NOW, James Rogers of Cinergy, had been looking at the facts and coming to the conclusion that the sooner action is taken, the better off his business will be. He cited Tony Blair's pledge to cut Britain's emissions of carbon dioxide by sixty percent over 50 years as a good example of setting a big policy goal and allowing businesses, which crave certainty, to adjust accordingly. One wonders, however, whether the British will move beyond offering a periodic "frank exchange of views" with the United States over climate change, and really push for action.

This and that

Speaking of this, also covered here, check out this. (Sorry, it's Friday and I feel lazy.)

Consumer Reports launches a green products site

You know what annoys me? Well, what really annoys me is the little "Road Test" blurb in the back of Newsweek, which every week fawns over big, ostentatious, grossly fuel inefficient vehicles like a thimble-headed cheerleader pawing at the quarterback's jock strap.

But you know what else annoys me? The fact that the product tests in Consumer Reports never report on energy efficiency, toxicity, reusability, or any other metric of sustainability. They treat consumers as self-contained money-maximizers with no concern for the communities around them.

Luckily, along comes GreenerChoices.org, a new CR-affiliated site that will focus on "products for a better planet." Right now it's pretty bare bones -- just general information, no reviews or tests of individual products -- but I hope over time it will grow and flourish. It will certainly serve as a welcome counterbalance to the many sites out there devoted to wide-eyed gawking at green products. Not that there's anything wrong with wide-eyed gawking -- I read many of those sites religiously -- but a mature market for sustainable consumer products is going to need some independent authority to vouchsafe quality and reliability.

I must say, it's better than nothing, but I really wish CR had integrated the effort into their main content. The idea that green concerns and green products are some sort of separate niche market is pernicious, and this only reinforces it. But hey, my glass is half full!