Latest Articles

Politics after disasters

Here's a fascinating piece by Peter Ford in Christian Science Monitor on the political effects of natural disasters throughout history, with some discussion of the possible political ramifications of the tsunami. Good to see someone going a little deeper than the "man clings to tree for two weeks" level.

Meteor Blades

Dan E. Arvizu will take his seat as the eighth director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on Friday. The federally funded, privately managed lab is the premier U.S. research institution for renewable energy and also conducts research into energy efficiency.  Its goal is not only to pioneer new technologies, but to get the fruit of its endeavors into the marketplace.

All I know about Mr. Arvizu is what I read in the DOE press release and what little is available about him on the Internet. He seems to have plenty of the right credentials and experience for the job. I wish him well.

But a new director won't mean more money for the laboratory, which will be operating on around $200 million again this year, about a sixth of the nation's entire renewables and efficiency budget. That's less than half the 1980 budget of NREL's predecessor, the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), where I went to work in 1978. Indeed, this year's entire R&E budget, which is poking at the $1.3 billion level, is only 40% of the R&E budget of a quarter century ago. It ought to be 400%. That would put it in the range of three months worth of what we're spending on Iraq.

Paper or pla… oh, fer chrissake!

Can you ever have enough answers to the paper-or-plastic question? Of course not! Here's another, from Treehugger.

Where’s Horton When You Need Him?

Natural disasters boon, bust for marine animals The latest in grim tsunami news comes via Sri Lankan sea-turtle researcher Kithsiri Kannangara, whose turtle hatchery was completely wiped out by the enormous waves, which have produced more tragedies than the ancient Greeks. In addition to a large leatherback turtle, seven rare green turtles, and some $500,000 […]

How Green Is My Valley

Silicon Valley gets excited about clean-energy tech Rising oil prices and increasing competition from fast-developing countries like China have some energy entrepreneurs in California’s tech-savvy Silicon Valley increasingly excited about the potential of good ol’ American ingenuity to curb the world’s addiction to fossil fuels — and make a buck doing it. Companies like SunPower […]

Baby, You Can Drive My Car — In 2010

Lots more hybrids and hydrogen cars in the pipeline We begin with a public service announcement: Quit driving so damn much. Ride your bike. Take a bus. Walk. OK, with that out of the way, we turn to auto news, which is plentiful. Ford announced it would add four new hybrids to its lineup, at […]

Global warming consensus

A couple of things I missed over the holiday break: Via this interesting piece on climate change consensus on RealClimate I found this interesting piece on climate change consensus in the Washington Post. Read 'em -- we'll be talking about this more soon.

Fred Thompson, CEO of Jane Goodall Institute, answers questions

Fred Thompson. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I’m president and CEO of the Jane Goodall Institute. What does your organization do? What, in a perfect world, would constitute “mission accomplished”? Our mission is to inspire and empower people to take informed, compassionate action to make the world a better place for people, animals, […]

Green quid pro quo for Liberia

William Powers has an intriguing editorial in the New York Times today arguing that Bush should help Liberia institute a sort of "Peace for Nature swap, based on the Debt for Nature model in which third world countries receive debt relief for conserving their natural heritage." The idea is that Liberia has something lots of folks want -- intact rain forest -- and they desperately need something we can help provide: stability. In exchange for setting its rain forest aside as a United Nations biosphere reserve, Liberia would receive U.N. peacekeeping, electricity and water, and training in new jobs based around ecotourism and limited logging. I think enviros should be skeptical about these schemes, vigilant against their historical tendency to value the rain forest over the long-term health and development of indigenous populations, but this sounds like an excellent plan to me, particularly given the grim alternatives Powers describes. An example of economic development driven by preservation of natural resources rather than exploitation thereof, sitting in the heart of Africa, would be, as Martha Stewart says, a good thing.

Deconstructing Inhofe

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Ok.) is the chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. He thinks global warming is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." He recently gave a speech on the floor of the Senate summarizing new science that he says supports his position. Chris Mooney utterly dismantles it.

UPDATE: Ah, yet another dismantling, more technical in nature, from the folks at RealClimate.