Climate Climate & Energy

Plan the rockingest party ever to celebrate Kyoto’s first birthday

It seems like just yesterday that the Kyoto Protocol came into force, only to languish in toothless uncertainty as major powers including the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the U.K. sought to tank it in various ways. But it’s been a whole year! Can you believe it? Party like Bush signed on. Photo: stock.xchng. Yes, today […]

Mountaintop-removal mining is devastating Appalachia, but residents are fighting back

This article was originally published in Orion Magazine. Not since the glaciers pushed toward these ridgelines a million years ago have the Appalachian Mountains been as threatened as they are today. But the coal-extraction process decimating this landscape, known as mountaintop removal, has generated little press beyond the region. A mountaintop no more.Photo: Vivian Stockman/SouthWings.The […]

Have They Asked the Conservative Think Tanks About This?

Climate change really screwing things up, say scientists around the world Global warming, neither a far-off abstraction nor the myth some (still!) claim it to be, is already causing mayhem worldwide, according to the latest rash of studies on the topic. In the late 20th century, the Northern Hemisphere experienced its most sustained warm stretch […]

The Bear Necessitates

Feds to consider listing polar bears as threatened Congressional Republicans waging jihad against the Endangered Species Act may soon have a new reason to hate it: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering giving polar bears federal endangered-species protections because climate change is melting their Arctic sea-ice habitat. If the feds are compelled to […]

The Sweden Hereafter

Sweden aims to be oil-free in 15 years It’s official: Sweden is the coolest … country … evar. Already widely admired for meatballs, Ikea, and, um, other Swedish stuff, the country has now announced its aim to have an oil-free economy by 2020. The Swedes cut the percentage of their energy coming from oil from […]

As snowy peaks get warmer, ski industry tries to stave off extinction

With the Olympics starting this week, all eyes are on the slopes of Turin. But skiing and snowboarding could disappear from our collective culture in about 50 years, if global-warming forecasts ring true. In a lot of popular ski areas, there simply won’t be any snow. It’s all downhill from here. Photo: stock.xchng. It’s already […]

What’s the most energy-efficient crop source for ethanol?

Biofuel is the hot topic lately in the green blogosphere. There's legitimate dispute about the political and environmental wisdom of plant-based fuels, but at the very least everyone should be starting from a valid, shared set of numbers (oh, to dream).

In an attempt to offer up such numbers, I'm going to ... rip off somebody smarter than me. Namely, Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, and author of the recently released Plan B 2.0, which is the best big-picture summary of our environmental situation I've ever read (and I'm only 2/3 through it!). The entire thing can be downloaded for free from EPI's site.

There are two key indicators when evaluating various crops for biofuel: fuel yield per acre and net energy yield of the biofuel, minus energy used in production and refining. This table (taken from Chapter 2) compares crops based on the first indicator:

Meter Aid

New power meters help customers cool juice use Millions of California households will soon be able to see at a glance how much electricity and money is being gobbled up as they flip on their hairdryers and plasma TVs. California regulators and two of the state’s biggest utilities are rolling out a $2 billion program […]

This Global Thing Is Everywhere!

Weird weather is messing with marine ecosystems along the West Coast Tens of thousands of starved seabirds washed up on West Coast beaches last spring, and researchers are blaming — surprise! — above-normal ocean temperatures and weird weather and wind patterns. Half of the auklets in California’s Farallon Islands didn’t even try to breed last […]

Maybe oil from elsewhere?

In an earlier post, I calculated (based on 2004 figures -- I may update them shortly) that Bush's "great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025" would involve lowering U.S. oil consumption by 10.5% over 19 years. Not very ambitious.

But it's worth noting that even there I may be giving Bush too much credit. I'm assuming that he means to "replace" the Middle Eastern oil with alternatives -- biofuels, electric cars, hydrogen cars, whatnot.

It's at least possible, though, that he means to replace Middle Eastern oil with non-Middle Eastern oil. I'm no oil geologist, so I don't have a good sense of whether this is possible. But it's not outrageous to think we could cover that amount (10.5% of our oil use) by increasing imports from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and Nigeria -- and by increasing domestic production (read: drilling in Alaska and off the coasts). Since Canadian tar sands are under furious production, it's likely that Canadian imports are going to rise anyway.

So, it's possible that Bush's "great goal" could be accomplished without reducing U.S. oil consumption at all. We could, to use his own addiction metaphor, get our fix elsewhere.

But even I'm not that cynical.