Climate Climate & Energy

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  • Australia ratifies Kyoto Protocol

    On his very first official day in office today, new Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ratified the Kyoto Protocol, committing his country to deep emissions cuts and putting ever more peer pressure on the United States — the only industrialized nation still holding out on Kyoto ratification. Full official ratification for Australia is still 90 […]

    Grist staff Climate & Energy

  • How will you ride the slide?

    (via Big Gav)

    David Roberts Climate & Energy

  • Notable quotable

    “We’re probably further ahead in actually doing something about greenhouse gases than most other countries.” — John Marburger III, chief science adviser to President Bush

    David Roberts Climate & Energy

  • The global nature of global warming

    This is my formal rebuttal to Brooke Coleman (director of the Renewable Energy Action Project), specifically to comments found in Tom Philpott's latest corn ethanol article. I'm using my access to the bully pulpit to pull it out of comments, like I did the last time a corn ethanol enthusiast joined the discussion.

    Welcome to the best environmental blog on the planet, Brooke. You don't seem to have a very high opinion of this community, but maybe you'll warm up to us. I don't speak for the whole community of course, I'm just one of the many who come here to learn and engage in reasoned debate.

    You seem to think that anything is better than oil. But believe it or not, in the real world, we sometimes have to pick between the lesser of two evils, at least until something better comes along.

    Plowing under the world's remaining grasslands and forests to grow industrial agrofuels dwarfs the damage done by oil spills. What happens when you take grain off the world food market and stuff it into American gas tanks? I'll tell you. Someone somewhere on this planet takes advantage of the high prices to plant more of it to fill the hole in the human food chain. Where is the arable land they need to do that? It is under an existing carbon sink or has another crop on it already. The second leading cause of global warming is deforestation. How hard is that concept to understand? Global warming is global. What we do here screws everybody.

    Biodiversivist Climate & Energy

  • The 100 most vulnerable nations have contributed least to climate change

    Another short new briefing (PDF) from the International Institute Environment and Development (IIED), this one on the 100 countries most vulnerable to climate change: • Human-induced climate change is likely to have the heaviest impact on small low-lying island and coastal states, African nations, Asian mega-deltas and the polar regions. • The 100 most vulnerable […]

    David Roberts Climate & Energy

  • CCS: Always almost ready, but never quite

    Over at Earth2Tech, reflecting on Washington’s recent rejection of a coal plant application, Alexix Madrigal stumbles across the essence of the carbon capture and sequestration issue: It highlights an interesting aspect of the CCS debate. Fossil-fuel energy companies are well-served by having the technology remain on the drawing board, devoid of any "industrial-scale" field deployments. […]

    David Roberts Climate & Energy

  • What’s up with the climate conference in Bali?

    Have you been hearing chatter at cocktail parties and on witty webzines about a big climate-change bash in Bali? Wondering what the deal is? We’re so glad you asked. The action in Bali isn’t on the beach. Photo: iStockphoto The rumors are true: From Dec. 3 to Dec. 14, more than 15,000 people from 190 […]

    Sarah K. Burkhalter Climate & Energy

  • New briefing finds improvement but new challenges for climate reporting

    A short new briefing (PDF) from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) says that media coverage of climate change has improved, but still shows several flaws: • There are many criticisms of how the media has covered climate change to date, but many signs of improvement too. For journalists new to the topic, […]

    David Roberts Climate & Energy

  • The question for China and India is not whether to make the transition away from coal, but how soon

    In part one I made the point that if China and India develop along the same path as the West, we’re all doomed. This fact is becoming increasingly clear to everyone. One way or another, whoever foots the bill, they’ll have to change, and that means shifting to a more expensive-in-the-short-term source of electricity, of […]

    David Roberts Climate & Energy

  • Another distraction debunked

    Fertilizing the ocean with iron looks to be just so much ... fertilizer.

    JMG Climate & Energy