Latest Articles
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The Truck Stops Here. Please.
Celebrities popularize commercial extreme truck Move over Hummer. The hip new thing in celeb vehicle bling is the International CXT, or commercial extreme truck. The hugemongous pickup weighs more than twice as much as the Hummer H2 and sits at the height of an 18-wheeler; more important, it can tow a 20-ton yacht and lug […]
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Yucca, Who Needs Ya?
Nuclear advocates take back the whole “Yucca is a necessity” thing Nuclear advocates have long insisted that the planned nuclear-waste repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is necessary before new nuclear reactors can be built, because on-site storage of waste is just too dangerous. But with Yucca’s prospects (at least in the short term) looking dim, […]
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Purple Haze, All in My Parks
Gas drilling in the West threatens air at national parks Air quality and visibility at more than a dozen of the nation’s oldest and most beloved national parks and monuments, including Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone National Park, are under threat from the ongoing boom in natural-gas drilling in the Western U.S. Officials from the Bureau […]
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The liter of the pack
I didn't know this: In Canada, automobile fuel economy is expressed as gallons per mile, not miles per gallon as it is in the U.S. (Well, really, it's liters per hundred kilometers, but if you're south of the 49th parallel and a metric-system-phobe, gallons per mile is essentially the same thing.)
Now, I don't mention this just to expose my lack of cultural knowledge of my northern neighbors. I mention it because it seems to me that liters-per-kilometer is a much better way of expressing the fuel efficiency of autos.
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100 sustainable companies
As usual, I'm getting to this late. Here are the 100 most sustainable corporations in the world, as announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The comically fuzzy definition: " A Corporation that produces an overall positive impact on society and the environment."
Joel Makower rightly criticizes the opacity of the ranking process and Alex Steffen rightly emphasizes that these types of rankings aren't about seeking perfection so much as moving the debate in the right direction.
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Richard Brooks, Greenpeace campaigner, answers questions
Richard Brooks. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I am a forest campaigner with Greenpeace Canada. What does your organization do? What, in a perfect world, would constitute “mission accomplished”? Greenpeace campaigns in 35 different countries using lobbying, science, public education, markets mobilization, and peaceful protest to bring about increased environmental protection of the […]
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Shrinking glaciers
Via BoingBoing, a series of pictures showing melting glaciers from story in the San Fran Chronicle a few months back.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talk
This evening I saw Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak at Seattle's Paramount theater, thanks to Foolproof's excellent "American Voices" program.
The guy is pretty amazing. For one thing -- and I'm not sure why this is the first thing that struck me -- he looks like a Kennedy! It's a little strange, like some PBS documentary or Discovery channel special come to life. And he speaks like a Kennedy too, obviously erudite but completely at ease with the kind of aspirational, inspirational rhetoric for which his father and uncle were known.
It's one of the more substantive one-hour public talks I've ever seen. His pleasantries lasted about 30 seconds (with a quick shout-out to local eco-hero Rep. Jay Inslee), and he was off and running full tilt -- few personal anecdotes or attempts at humor, no sugar, just fiber. That style might not be everybody's cup of tea, but I love it. There was no slack.
The basic theme of the talk was less environmental stuff than corporate power. Here are a few random notes and reflections, off the top of my head, in no particular order (all this stuff will, of course, be familiar to those who have seen him speak or read his book):
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Go “Geo-Green”
Environmentalists need to seek new allies and new rationales, according to the raging debates spurred by the "Death of Environmentalism." This country's most important foreign affairs column is increasingly giving voice to one such argument.
Tom Friedman in The New York Times once again bangs the drum for energy efficiency, renewables, and lowering oil consumption as a means to spur reform in the Middle East. He does throw in a call for nuclear power, an argument that won't sit well with many greenies.
But Friedman dubs himself a "geo-green," explicitly promoting green behavior for geopolitical ends. He wants to deprive the undemocratic regimes of the Middle East the huge petro dollars that allow them to buy their way out of facing realm reform.
You give me $18-a-barrel oil and I will give you political and economic reform from Algeria to Iran. All these regimes have huge population bubbles and too few jobs. They make up the gap with oil revenues. Shrink the oil revenue and they will have to open up their economies and their schools and liberate their women so that their people can compete. It is that simple.
