Climate Climate & Energy

Reich for auctioned permits

Robert Reich — former Clinton Secretary of Labor, current economics public policy prof at Harvard — was on public radio’s Marketplace yesterday, stumping for 100 percent permit auctions and even, toward the end, something that sounds like cap-and-dividend: Our atmosphere belongs to all of us, and polluters should have to pay to use it. The […]

Link dump

Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has an article in The NYT, "The Rich Get Hungrier," which is a good short summary of various causes of higher food prices and increased world hunger, and why they are related even though not the same thing.

U.S. driving down 11 billion miles in March, the sharpest drop in history

Price does matter. So does public perception of likely future prices. As it becomes increasingly clear that high gasoline prices are not a fluke, Americans are adjusting their driving habits.

March 2008 saw "the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history" of total vehicle miles traveled (aka VMT) according to the Federal Highway Administration's monthly report on "Traffic Volume Trends" [PDF].

In March 2008, Americans drove 246 billion milles, compared to 257 billion in March 2007. Indeed, the March 2008 figure is lower than the March 2004 figure. To see just how remarkable that is, look at the annual vehicle-distance traveled data (in billions of miles) since 1983 (this is a moving 12-month total):

Junk emails go green

You know the spam: the Nigerian oil minister has an outrageous sum of money and desperately needs a foreigner’s help to take it off his hands. But the times are changing — junk email has gone green! A New York Times blogger reports receiving an email asking for investment in a Renewable Energy Technology System. […]

Group airing ads in support of Climate Security Act in states with swing-vote senators

The ad wars over the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act continue: Environmental Defense Fund has just released new ads in support of the legislation. They show a man being struck by falling barrels of oil, telling viewers to call their senators and ask them to support the bill. “By telling special interests they can’t pollute for […]

Walruses should be threatened species, says litigious green group

Having seen no action on a petition from last year, the Center for Biological Diversity says it will sue to force the U.S. Interior Department to consider listing the walrus as a threatened species. Walruses do all of their resting between foraging trips, breeding, and chillaxing on Arctic sea ice, which is rapidly disappearing. And […]

Gingrich mounts campaign to support domestic oil drilling

"Green conservative" and We campaign spokesman Newt Gingrich is mounting a new campaign: "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less." His promise is that (blocking Lieberman-Warner and) opening up drilling off the coasts, in the Gulf of Mexico, in northern Alaska, and in the Rockies (for oil shale) would lower gas prices. Now, for one thing […]

The enemy of the human race is set to wipe out Europe’s meager emissions gains

They’re building a huge new coal-fired power plant in Holz, Germany, where there are already three. To fuel it, an open-pit mine that has scarred the fields outside town with a 31-square-mile hole will be moved west, swallowing up this village and nearby Pesch. Already, their neat cottages sit empty and boarded. That’s just one […]

The mag exalts Canada’s potential to become the Saudi Arabia of the north

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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I consider Time to be one of the more forward-looking periodicals when it comes to the environment. But the editors messed up in this week's edition. The June 2 Time carries a breathless feature about the potential petroleum bonanza in Canada's tar sands.

The article's authors are so giddy with the testosterone rush of big-ass earth-moving machines that they forgot what a multifaceted disaster this "bonanza" would be. The magazine quotes tar men in Alberta as they marvel at their own ability to move mountains ... literally.

At one open-pit mine, a manager brags that his operation moves enough dirt every 48 hours to fill Toronto's 60,000-seat SkyDome. "A year from now, that mountain won't be there," he says, referring to a wall of black soil. Some of the biggest trucks on earth, 20 feet tall, carrying 320 tons of dirt in each load, crawl through the "stark landscape of jack pine, spruce and poplar forests" like Tonka toys built for Paul Bunyan.

How intense is the mining?

USDA defends America’s fuel supply

Much of what Vinod Khosla had to say in his latest post, and my responses to that post here, have been covered in previous posts. So, if some of this sounds eerily familiar, now you know why.

Admittedly, I have an advantage in this debate because he can't respond directly to my arguments. Remember the West Wing episode where the Josh Lyman character makes the mistake of responding to a blogger?

On the other hand, I'm not an independent blogger with my own website. Thus, the fine line between courage and stupidity. May I offer an apology to Grist for my stupidity and my thanks for allowing me to express it.

Khosla begins his defense reiterating the following belief:

In fact, I strongly believe any nascent technology that cannot exist without subsidies beyond an introductory period will not gain market penetration and is not worth supporting ...