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And By “Miscellaneous” We Mean “Nefarious”

Substantial changes to Clean Air Act slipped into energy bill Buried deep in the energy bill, filed under “Miscellaneous,” is a tiny bit of text that could affect the Clean Air Act in a big way. The provision, authored by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, would allow “downwind” […]

Here’s a Solution. Now What Was Your Problem Again?

Bush administration pushes energy bill as solution to high gas prices American citizens — or “consumers,” as they’re known these days — are irritated about high gas prices, and many of them blame President Bush, whose popularity has hit new lows. Of course, presidents are hardly responsible for short-term swings in commodity prices. Nevertheless, Bush […]

oh, and oil.

Speaking of China and oil, Peak Energy has a long and informative post up about the convergence of those two portentous topics.

Brand v. Romm

I wrote earlier about Stewart Brand's attempt at provocation, an essay called "Environmental Heresies." Now Technology Review has started a special blog where Brand will duke it out with Joseph Romm, former Dept. of Energy official and "hydrogen economy" debunker. Should be interesting to follow.

Kaisha Atakhanova fought to keep nuclear waste out of Kazakhstan

Kaisha Atakhanova. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. The Republic of Kazakhstan bears the scars of its Soviet past. Intensive agriculture has drastically shrunk the inland Aral Sea, creating one of the world’s worst ecological disasters, while decades of nuclear testing have poisoned the landscape and its people. The country — which is dominated by vast stretches […]

These six activists have won a top prize — and countless battles

The winners: (clockwise from left) López, Ewango, Roth, Tamayo, Goldman (cofounder of the prize), Atakhanova, Jean-Baptiste. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. You know it’s been a tough year when you’ve spent half of it wondering if you’re dead. Since the October debut of “The Death of Environmentalism,” many environmentalists in the U.S. have indulged in spells […]

Find out the biggest pollution sources near you!

One of my favorite tools is the EPA's eGRID database, which contains emissions data on nearly every electric power generation source in the United States.

You can use it to educate yourself and your friends about which coal-fired power plants upwind of you will benefit from Smokey Joe Barton's latest transparent attempt to gut the Clean Air Act.

Spend a few hours exploring the power plants in your area and state, and in no time you'll be the toast of your town's cocktail circuit. Download it now, while the EPA still exists!

Stossel uses Crichton for ratings

Sorry to beat the dead horse that is the John Stossel/Michael Critchton lovefest, but I thought Stossel's On the Media interview April 8 was just too rich to miss. At the end of a somewhat testy interview about the state of scientific consensus on climate change, On the Media co-host Brooke Gladstone said:

In December, you featured novelist Michael Crichton on 20/20, and you praised him for contradicting something most people believe and fear. You went on to say that environmental organizations are fomenting false fears in order to promote agendas and raise money. Why use a fiction writer to refute the scientific community?

JOHN STOSSEL: Because he's famous, and he's interesting, and he's smart, and he writes books that lots of people read, and I could interview the scientists for 20/20, but more people will pay attention when this particular smart fiction writer says it.

Famous! Market grabbers! By those standards, Hollywood is chock-a-block with climate experts.  Let's swell those IPCC ranks!

A new generation of activists eschews the single-issue focus of its forebears

As Praktike, The Reapers, and others have said recently, environmentalism desperately needs to climb out of its special-interest, single-issue ghetto and start forming working coalitions. There are two basic ways this might happen.

One is that individual green organizations -- or the storied "Green Group" coalition of big green organizations -- might strike explicit deals with other single-issue groups like labor. This is what seems to be going on with the Apollo Alliance.

The other is that action on green issues may be taken over by broad-based, loose-network-style groups like MoveOn, where membership is largely transaction-based and no single issue dominates. Green groups might still serve a think-tanks or training grounds, but the action itself will be coordinated mostly by a young, internet-savvy, flash-mobbin' new generation of activists.

On that note, Markos from Daily Kos recently spent three days at "a conference of various leaders of the budding VLWC." (That's the Vast Leftwing Conspiracy, an attempt by lefties to match the coordination and message discipline of the VRWC.) He brought back some interesting observations, which I quote at length:

Sierra Club’s Carl Pope starts his own blog

Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope has started a blog of his very own.

His inaugural post makes two points: