Climate Climate & Energy
All Stories
-
How to solve renewables’ intermittency problem
This whole solar thing isn’t working out. I’m going to start Vote Lunar.
-
Oregon’s successful mileage tax experiment worked smoothly — and helped curb congestion
Recently I’ve been flogging the concept of a mileage tax, a system of per-mile road usage fees that over time can replace our dysfunctional gasoline tax as a way of funding transportation infrastructure. Although people have raised a lot of interesting objections, I’d like for now to skip ahead and simply describe Oregon’s successful experiment […]
-
![]()
![]()
How do you solve a problem like Silvio?
G8 officials don’t want Silvio Berlusconi to play a leading role in any climate talks that may occur this summer during the July summit in Italy. (Photo Livio Anticoli, Courtesy Prime Minister of Italy’s Office) Barack Obama has a problem, one he shares with Gordon Brown. And, for that matter, with Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, […]
-
Global warming denier Avery doesn’t know the difference between growth and growth rate
The American Daily has just published this laughably wrong piece of disinformation by long-term global warming denier Dennis Avery, “Now CO2 is Declining as well as Temperatures.” Before AD and Avery take it down, let’s look at what passes for analysis among the deniers. The piece opens: The atmospheric CO2 levels at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa […]
-
![]()
![]()
A roundup of notable speeches from the Sport and Environment Conference
The big news of day one at the World Conference on Sport and the Environment in Vancouver, British Columbia, was the unveiling of a carbon neutrality plan for the 2010 Olympics. The rest of the day’s events were a lot like the offset plan: solid at their core and short on details. During a keynote […]
-
Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost — one tenth of a penny on the dollar
Since the nation is about to launch into a long debate about the costs of climate action versus the cost of inaction, here is an overview of the major cost analyses of global climate action. In its definitive 2007 synthesis report of the scientific literature, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [PDF] concluded: In 2050, […]
-
![]()
![]()
Vancouver Olympics Committee shopping carbon offset plan
The Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) wants make the 2010 Winter Games carbon neutral, but the plan it released Monday counts on help from the private sector to make it happen. At the World Conference on Sport and the Environment, VANOC announced a plan to neutralize 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide, mostly through renewable energy and […]
-
Todd Stern’s speech cheers delegates at Bonn climate talks
This dispatch was filed from the ongoing U.N.-sponsored climate change talks in Bonn, Germany. As expected, Sunday’s speech by Todd Stern at the U.N. climate talks in Bonn created quite a stir. Sitting in the rear of the hall, it was hard not to think back to the last time U.S. statements in a plenary […]
-
Shoddy economics at The New York Times
Joe Romm has done a pretty thorough trashing of Matt Wald’s recent New York Times piece. Herein, I pile on. This is a shoddy enough piece of journalism to deserve it. Like Joe, I’ve talked to Matt Wald before, and generally I find him to be a good writer on energy. He’s capable of much […]
-
A mandarin’s plea for climate action
New Year’s Day is not, I suppose, everyone’s idea of the best time to receive a sobering message. But like it or not, this year it happened to me. The message that popped into my inbox, unannounced and unexpected, would have brought even the most hungover dreamer smartly back to reality. “Today,” it opened uncompromisingly, […]
