Climate Climate & Energy

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  • The Gulf spill video roundup

    So, the Gulf oil spill has been going on for more than a month now. The open wellhead is spewing thousands of gallons of oil every day, and in that classic the-cure-is-worse-than-the-disease way, BP has been dispersing the rogue oil with highly toxic chemicals. Eleven rig workers are already dead. Now the lives of hundreds […]

    Jennifer Prediger Climate & Energy

  • Tea Party helps pass carbon tax

    Maryland’s Montgomery County Council passed the nation’s first county-level carbon tax on Wednesday thanks in part to a little heckling from a group of rowdy Tea Party protesters. It would be hard to dream up a more delightful twist to cap off a campaign that was about as dramatic as they come in the world […]

    Keith Harrington Climate & Energy

  • Love, in the Time of Blasting

    This is the scene, when the coal-fired electricity that lights up New York City’s neon theatre district lowers on stage: We are inside the home of Marie and Hovie, a young couple living in the mountain holler of Eagle Creek. With their family’s 150-year-old homestead threatened by a planned mountaintop removal strip-mining operation, Hovie, a […]

    Jeff Biggers Climate & Energy

  • Remembering my last oil spill

    It’s been three years since a container ship, the COSCO Busan, spilled 53,500 gallons of bunker fuel into San Francisco Bay, just after my return home to live on the bay by the sea that I love. Remnant oil still sometimes surfaces after it rains and the bay’s herring fishery has yet to recover.  Ten […]

    David Helvarg Climate & Energy

  • Passive-aggressive cakes spill onto Gulf coast

    skooksie via Flickr Creative Commons Some crude feelings about BP’s half-baked efforts are starting to wash up in the cake window of New Orleans grocery store Breaux Mart, likely to be followed by a boom in sales. I wonder how much oil this recipe calls for? via Cake Wrecks —————————————————————————————————————————————————– Like what you see? Sign […]

    Ashley Braun Climate & Energy

  • Top U.S. scientists to Congress: No more ‘business as usual’ on climate change

    A group of the country’s top scientists say that the Earth definitely is getting hotter, that human activity is driving it, and that, unless dramatic measures are taken, the planet’s water supply, sea levels, coral reefs, etc. will be changed forever. So what else is new?   Well, actually, this time the National Academy of […]

    Randy Rieland Climate & Energy

  • ‘Too big to fail’ isn’t working out in the energy world either

    There’s an interesting debate going on right now over whether to raise the liability cap on oil companies drilling offshore, and if so by how much. Just last week, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) blocked an attempt to raise it from $75 million to $10 billion. Yesterday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) blocked another attempt. (In related […]

    David Roberts Climate & Energy

  • Reclaiming the streets

    Cars promise mobility, and in a largely rural setting they provide it. But in an urbanizing world, where more than half of us live in cities, there is an inherent conflict between the automobile and the city. After a point, as their numbers multiply, automobiles provide not mobility but immobility, as well as increased air […]

    Lester Brown Cities

  • Peak oil production coming much sooner than expected

    A storm is quickly approaching, and the world is not ready for it. The permanent end of the era of cheap oil is coming as soon as next year, according to a raft of official reports that have made their way into energy media over the last few months. Governments are now beginning to acknowledge the looming crisis. Yet, […]

    Craig Severance Climate & Energy

  • We should totally nuke the oil spill

    According to a Miami Herald opinion writer, one thing that’s getting in the way of stopping the oil spill is our emotional attachment to the Gulf ecosystem.  And food.  So we should nuke it.  Which is kind of like microwaving, but safer, because the Russians do it all the time.  Or so says an expert.  […]

    Adam Browning Climate & Energy