Climate Climate & Energy

Nature on ethanol

The editors at Nature discover that corn ethanol sucks: Biofuels are unlikely ever to be more than bit-players in the great task of weaning civilization from Earth’s coal-mine and oil-well teats. But they may yet have valuable niches — including some that allow them to serve some of the world’s poor, both as fuels for […]

2007: A record-setting U.S. drought year

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) just issued its September report -- and the West and Southeast continue to scorch:

About 43 percent of the contiguous U.S. fell in the moderate to extreme drought categories (based on the Palmer Drought Index) at the end of September.

Here is the U.S. Drought Monitor (darker = drier):

Here are some of the drought records being set around the country:

A scary pro-coal op-ed

It's said that when John Paul Jones' ship the Bonhomme Richard was in tatters, and captain of the British ship Serapis demanded his surrender, Jones cried out, "I have not yet begun to fight!" Upon which a petty officer said to himself, "There's always some dumb bastard who doesn't get the word."

Both phrases live on in the Navy, the second one probably more relevant today. They both popped into my head when I read this scary coal-boosting op-ed piece from "up Nort'" in Minnesota.

Donald Brown on the ethical dimensions of climate change

Here’s a great 10-minute video on the ethical dimensions of climate change, by Donald Brown of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Transcript here. (Thanks Calvin!)

E.O. Wilson, John Updike, and others on climate change

So we've seen much of the so-called intelligentsia ignore the global warming issue when asked by the Atlantic Monthly to consider the greatest challenges to the American idea. But not all of those asked were so short-sighted.

You would expect the one environmentalist they asked, Edward O. Wilson (essay below) to get it right. But what about a Harvard constitutional law professor and his policy analyst/linguist wife?

Lawrence H. Tribe and Carolyn K. Tribe: "Our greatest national challenge is to reverse the profoundly misguided course the last two presidential elections have set, while doing three things ... Third, cooperating with the international community before it is too late to restore the degraded health of our fragile planet and to protect the well-being of all its inhabitants."

Who else got it right, or partially right? John Updike, Anna Deavere Smith, and even Stephen Breyer:

John Updike: "The American idea, as I understand it, is to trust people to know their own minds and to act in their own enlightened self-interest, with a necessary respect for others ... The challenges ahead? A fury against liberal civilization by the world's poor, who have nothing to lose; a ruinous further depletion of the world's natural assets; a global warming that will change world climate and with it world geopolitics. The American idea, promulgated in a land of plenty, must prepare to sustain itself in a world of scarcity."

My point exactly!

Free e-book on biofuels and water

I know -- let's use all our food and drinking water to make SUV fuel!

A foundation officer on the need for coordination and funding for equity efforts

This is a guest essay by Danielle Deane. Deane is a Program Officer at the Hewlett Foundation, where she runs the New Constituencies for the Environment initiative. She is also a 2007-2008 Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE) Connecting Leaders Fellow. The essay is part of a series on climate equity. —– 1. What would […]

Introducing an ongoing series on the most undercovered aspect of climate change

((equity_include)) One aspect of climate change is overlooked by politicians, commentators, and big NGOs alike: equity. The suffering that climate change will bring is going to be visited primarily on the globe’s most vulnerable populations — the very people who have done the least to cause the problem. Any response to climate change that hopes […]

Umbra on carbon offsets

Dear Umbra, I’ve been reading the whole back-and-forth about carbon offsets, and it seems strange to me that most (all?) of the ones I’ve seen fund projects that, while worthwhile, may or may not result in the promised emissions reduction. It seems that a simple way around this problem would be to buy actual emissions […]

Quote of the day

Why do I keep harping on coal? Here’s why: “It’s becoming impossible to build coal stations,” Michael Liebreich, founder and CEO of New Energy Finance, a London-based research company, said during a visit to Paris on Friday. The backlash against coal “is one of the driving forces for the clean energy industry.”