Articles by Kif Scheuer

Green bubbles rising

I was reading the magazine section of the same Sunday NYT that David noted for its coverage of all things green, when I came across a six-page advertising section for "green properties" that left me shaking my head. (Sorry, not available online.)

The title is prefaced by "luxury homes and estates," so I already know we're going to a place I'm not comfortable with. The tendency for green building coverage is to focus on lifestyle choices of the affluent or the extreme (examples here, here, and here), but that tendency is already well-trod, if painful, territory. What got me in this piece was something else.

These high-rise condominiums, town homes and vacation houses are capturing the interest of luxury buyers and renters who seek to lower energy consumption and make more earth conscious choices.

Now keep in mind that phrase: "earth conscious choices."

Chinese coal growth

NYT ran the latest in their "energy challenge" series on Sunday: "The Cost of Coal" looks at China's coal use and resulting pollution problems.

It starts off with a bleak portrait ...

One of China's lesser-known exports is a dangerous brew of soot, toxic chemicals and climate-changing gases from the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants

... and moves on down from there.

Across the pond looks like over the rainbow: Business and gov’t dealing with climate change together

The Guardian reported yesterday that "heads of some of Britain's biggest companies are meeting Tony Blair today to demand tougher targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions."

What's this? Industry demanding that government set tougher targets? Has the metric system created a different economic system where business likes regulation?

Coal, coal, and more coal

Yesterday's critique of enviros' hopes for peak oil outcomes dovetails beautifully with this article from the NYT on what big coal is up to.

The future for American energy users is playing out in coal-rich areas like northeastern Wyoming, where dump trucks and bulldozers swarm around 80-foot-thick seams at a Peabody Energy strip mine here, one of the largest in the world.

Coal, the nation's favorite fuel in much of the 19th century and early 20th century, could become so again in the 21st. The United States has enough to last at least two centuries at current use rates -- reserves far greater than those of oil or natural gas. And for all the public interest in alternatives like wind and solar power, or ethanol from the heartland, coal will play a far bigger role.

The article presents two approaches being pursued by two big coal players, Peabody Energy and American Electric power, both of which are about aggressive development, and both of which do little to address climate change.