Latest Articles

To the Manner Bjorn

Lomborg Meeting Downplays Importance of Climate Change Bjorn Lomborg is vexing enviros once again. The Danish contrarian — who generated heaps of controversy a few years ago with his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which argued that many environmental concerns are overblown — is back in the headlines, this time for organizing a workshop of eight […]

Bonn Vivant

China Pledges to Get 10 Percent of Power from Renewables by 2010 China pleasantly surprised enviros and politicians alike on Friday with a vow that it will generate 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2010. “This commitment was amazing,” said Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, German minister for economic cooperation and development, at an international […]

Reading This Blurb Is Killing You

Researchers Find Toxic Dust on Computers Dust on the computer in front of you right now contains toxic chemicals that can lead to long-term neurological and reproductive health problems, according to a new study. So really, you should stop reading this, back away from the keyboard, and go take a walk. But for you masochists, […]

I Just Met a Girl Named Maria

Senate Backs Redefinition of Nuke Waste The Senate voted narrowly yesterday to allow the Department of Energy to reclassify some high-level nuclear waste as “low-level” and leave it in place (albeit covered in concrete) rather than transport it to Nevada to be buried deep underground. The reclassification, contained in a provision inserted by Sen. Lindsey […]

Film plot rings true as NOAA runs up against White House

The brewing storm. Image: NOAA. Even after grapefruit-sized hail and monster tornadoes assault major cities in the Northern Hemisphere in the film The Day After Tomorrow, Jack Hall, a paleoclimatologist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, still can’t get the ballooning crisis of global warming through the thick skull of the vice president. “I […]

10 Things I Haiti About You

Deforestation in Haiti Increases Flood Danger More than 90 percent of the country of Haiti is deforested. If you think that’s depressing, consider that the lack of trees to hold soil in place has left Haiti’s rural residents vulnerable to periodic floods in which torrential rainwater tumbles down mountains, picking up gravel and boulders that […]

Punch-drunk Lovelock

Famed Ecologist Argues Nuclear Power Needed to Fight Global Warming A prominent ecologist is raising a ruckus in environmental circles by arguing that the world needs to immediately embrace nuclear energy if it’s to have any chance of combating climate change. James Lovelock, the U.K. scientist whose Gaia Hypothesis — that the earth itself is […]

Mighty Morphin’ Coal-power Rangers

NAFTA Commission Critical of Coal-Fired Power Plants Overall pollution in North America declined by 10 percent from 1998 to 2001 (the last year for which figures are available), but coal-fired power plants continue to lag behind other sources in the pace of improvement and in reducing the total amount of pollution, according to a new […]

Coal Hand Luke

EPA Proposal Altered to Favor Coal-Fired Power Plants On the heels of today’s report that 46 of the top 50 polluters in North America are coal-fired power plants comes this tidbit: A U.S. EPA proposal to curb interstate air pollution was altered by the White House at the last minute in a way that heavily […]

Elizabeth Grossman reviews The Whale and the Supercomputer by Charles Wohlforth

Out on the ice that forms the shores of the Arctic Ocean, the Iñupiaq whalers of Barrow, Alaska, hauled in their catch, a bowhead whale that weighed more than 100,000 pounds. The entire village turned out to pull the enormous mammal ashore and butcher it. Sleds and snowmobiles were piled with maktak (energy-laden slabs of whale blubber and skin) and fresh bloody meat.