Climate Climate & Energy

Editorial questions the sequestration promise

The New Republic has a fine, fine editorial about coal today. It calls into question whether spending up to $40 billion on the ten-years-hence promise of carbon sequestration in order to save the coal industry from obsolescence is the best investment we could make to fight global warming. The weak link in the argument is […]

Environmental Defense’s climate ads go negative, miss the mark

There's no shortage of messaging on climate change these days, but the latest ad I came across concerned me in the same way that Greenpeace's pissy kid ad did. I just heard the radio version of Environmental Defense's two TV ads (which this hard-rock station was repeating back-to-back, for extra negative impact), which tear a page from the same playbook: "The Gift" features kids reading off a list of lousy things that adults are giving them, like droughts, stronger hurricanes, etc. And then there's the one about time running out alongside a long list of bad things to come called "Tick," and one of a girl about to be hit by train thrown in for fun.

Sure, it's the kids whose future will be most impacted, but messaging with fear and guilt is not the way to win the hearts and minds of adults, as Gristmillers discussed here and in many other threads recently. The big green groups really need to get on the positive bus as much as possible, or we're going to see the public ignoring the "threats" of climate change and risk missing the opportunities inherent in getting off of fossil fuels.

Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump moves structures to account for fault line

If falsified quality-assurance documents and vehement opposition from locals (among other things) aren’t enough to put Nevada’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump on your list of Bad Places to Dump Nuclear Waste, may we offer you an inconveniently located underground fault line?

A clean tech firm accuses a carbon credit nonprofit of forcing kids to do fieldwork

You might blame a leading carbon-offset provider of forcing poor kids to work, according to The Times of London. Or not.

Carbon credit firm Climate Care pays families in India to use human-powered treadle pumps to get water out of the ground for drinking and farming. As a result, half a million foot pumps have replaced diesel ones, which pollute and cost a lot to fuel. Unfortunately, Climate Care doesn't ensure the diesel pumps are retired instead of finding new life with other owners.

Nor does it stick around to make sure that kids aren't doing all the pumping. It probably never crossed the minds at the British nonprofit that this would come into question. Children have done backbreaking farm work for eons in regions where sustaining an income in the field is a family necessity. And the foot pumps are supposed to be easier to operate than hand pumps.

New study claims ethanol and biodiesel may actually boost GHG emissions

Update [2007-9-25 15:12:2 by Tom Philpott]:In the 24-hour lag time between finishing this piece and its posting, I had an email exchange with Keith Smith of the University of Edinburgh, one of the authors of the study discussed below. I’ve modified the post to add information I got from Smith. By all accounts, biofuels deliver […]

The benefits of using prizes to drive alternative fuel research

An article on the benefits of using economic prizes instead of subsidies as incentives for alternative fuel research appeared in Monday's edition of National Review Online, an extremely right-wing publication.

Besides the fact that this is a good idea that economists have been increasingly talking about over the past few years, there are a couple additional take-away points:

1. There are many people on the right who are sincerely interested in environmental progress and who are thinking seriously about the best ways to move forward.
2. Being able to converse relatively proficiently about economics and market principles, not just acknowledgment of the problems, is the best way to create a bipartisan consensus on policy. People on the right will listen to these and often agree.

Ice loss hits record low this month in the Arctic

Hitting a record low on September 16, 2007, the Arctic lost half a million square miles of ice compared to its last record low just two years ago.

For all the details, check out the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) website, which notes "the Northwest Passage is still open, but is starting to refreeze." We are still on track for an ice free Arctic by 2030, decades ahead of the climate models.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

U.N. hosts one-day climate meeting to spur climate-agreement fever

Gathering momentum for a United Nations climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December where the successor to the Kyoto Protocol is expected to be born, the U.N. hosted a one-day climate conference at its headquarters in New York on Monday. The conference attracted 150 nations, about 80 of which sent at least their heads of […]

Company will file application for new U.S. nuclear reactor

And so it begins: Tomorrow, NRG Energy will become the first company in nearly 30 years to file an application to build a new nuclear reactor in the U.S.

Moon base project sucks up potential climate research dollars

In the annals of self-delusion, NASA's Moon-Mars mission ranks right at the top. Today's NY Times, for example, carries details about NASA's plans for a moon base to be built sometime around 2020.

Let me be clear. There is a 0 percent chance that this Moon base or anything like it will ever be built, for the following reason: the moon missions in the '60s and early '70s cost something like $100 billion in today's dollars. There is no way that setting up a semipermanent lunar base will be anything other than many times more expensive. That would put the total cost at one to a few trillion dollars.

NASA, however, is spending a few billion dollars each year on this -- something like 1 percent of the money they would need to spend each year to actually accomplish this task, well short of the $100 billion or so actually required. Given this reality, there is no way we will ever actually do this.