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Diesel

Green Car Congress compares four Honda Accords -- a hybrid, a clean diesel, and two sedans -- and comes to a rather surprising conclusion: "The outcome: the Accord Diesel (using petroleum diesel) offers the lowest fuel consumption and the lowest CO2 emissions, even surpassing the Accord Hybrid."

UPDATE: Here's a follow-up post comparing different versions of the Honda Civic.

Stevie Nix

Interior Deputy Secretary Griles resigns The No. 2 official at the Interior Department, Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles, yesterday became the latest Bush administration appointee to announce he’s jumping ship come January. Under investigation during nearly half his tenure at Interior for ethics violations stemming from his uninterrupted $284,000 annual payments from his former employer, […]

Would You Like to Come Up for a CO2 Cap?

Bipartisan energy-policy panel calls for CO2 caps The notion of imposing mandatory restrictions on greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S. continues to gather steam among those with no power to impose them. A privately funded panel of energy experts — including Republicans, Democrats, academics, environmentalists, and energy-industry representatives — wrapped up two years of study today […]

Suit of Harmer

Automakers sue California over greenhouse-gas emission regs The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers filed suit against California on Tuesday, charging that the state’s new regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles (requiring a roughly 30 percent cut by 2016) amount to the imposition of new fuel-economy standards, which is the feds’ purview. The Schwarzenegger administration has pledged […]

Buenos Hot Aires

U.S. professes bafflement at international ire over climate change “I’m not sure why we’re considered the ‘bad boys’,” said puzzled U.S. climate negotiator Harlan Watson at this week’s U.N. climate change convention in Buenos Aires. The conference — the last such meeting to take place before the Kyoto Protocol goes into effect in February — […]

Umbra on Christmas trees

Dear Umbra, Please settle our office dispute. Which is better for the environment: real or fake Christmas trees? Some believe that cutting down juvenile trees, displaying them for two weeks, then throwing them in the garbage is destructive, wasteful, and highly unfriendly to the environment. Others say that the Christmas-tree business keeps land that would […]

The people on top of our oil

It was published the day before the election, so it didn't get the attention it should have, but it's worth your time to go back and read Daniel Glick's piece in Salon about Bush's renewed push to drill in Alaska's Northeast National Petroleum Reserve and the threat it poses to the Eskimo way of life. NPR-A is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's less-celebrated cousin, but at 23.5 million acres, it's the largest chunk of public land in the U.S. It's worth some attention, and so is the life the Eskimos there have lived for hundreds of years.

Fond O’ Honda

Honda ranked as greenest automaker Of the six largest automakers selling vehicles in the U.S., Honda is the greenest, according to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Emissions from Honda’s 2003 vehicles amounted to less than half the industry average. Nissan, which ranked second, was the most improved in reducing emissions of […]

Put It in Neutral

HSBC pledges carbon neutrality U.K.-based banking company HSBC has announced a management plan aimed at reaching carbon neutrality by 2006. With 10,000 banks in 76 countries, HSBC estimates it will cost up to $7 million to account for the more than 600,000 tons of carbon dioxide the company adds to the atmosphere every year via […]

Energy Bill

Clinton says clean-energy backers should quit whining and get to work Former President Bill Clinton yesterday said that energy issues, with their links to national security and environmental decline, “may have a bigger impact on America and the world than virtually all the things that were debated” in the run-up to the recent election. At […]