Articles by Clark Williams-Derry

Er, food data that is

I'm not much of a gourmand, but I do love to play with food. Well, food data, anyway. So when I happened upon the Food System Factoids blog, I totally pigged out.

The menu may not be for everyone, but if you have a craving for analyses of food pricing trends, or evaluations of carbon emissions from U.S. agriculture, you'll find plenty to satisfy.

Take, for instance, this post on the relative change in prices of soft drinks and processed fats vs. fruits and veggies. The data's a bit old now, but what a story. From 1985 to 2000, the real, inflation-adjusted cost of fresh fruits and veggies went up almost 40 percent, while the costs of soft drinks went down by nearly a quarter.

He will green you up

Wow. Just wow.

The B.C. government is trying to out-green California with a sweeping strategy unveiled Tuesday to fight global warming by cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions from everything from cars and industry to the daily energy consumption of ordinary people.

As far as I can tell, Campbell's government looked at each of the recent advances in Gov. Ahnold's climate policy in California -- the emission goals, the broad authority to develop a cap and trade system, the vehicle emission standards, policies on electric power -- and tried to take each one a step further.

It’s the enemy of the human race

If you care about global warming, you've got to care about coal. Unlike oil and gas -- for which North American production is in decline -- there's plenty of coal left on American soil. And while some energy companies and promoters of "energy independence" see this as an unqualified good, those of us who see most issues through the lens of climate change see the "wall of coal" as one of the scariest things out there.

That's why California's latest foray into climate policy is so heartening:

New California power regs might hurt coal … or not

Good news! California has moved to curb the spread of coal-fired power plants. This is a really big deal, since energy companies have been vying to build as many as 35 of the carbon-spewing facilities in western states, largely to feed California's growing demand for electricity.

But California state regulators -- justifiably concerned about the climate impacts of burning so much coal -- got tricky: they prohibited the state's utilities from buying power from any plant that emits more carbon than a super-efficient natural gas power plant.

In other words, new coal-fired power is a no-go for the California market, unless plant operators somehow figure out a way to burn coal without emitting CO2 into the atmosphere.

That's the theory. But the western power market may actually work to undermine California's good intentions.