Climate Climate & Energy
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We Love a Plan in Uniform
U.S. military aims to trim energy use After years of pooh-poohing fuel efficiency, the U.S. military has been ordered by the Department of Defense to cut energy use at all military bases and facilities by 2 percent per year — to which they replied, “Yes, sir! Right away, sir!” The Pentagon’s demand comes on the […]
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The Leak Shall Inhibit the Earth
Northern Alaska pipeline leak may rank as one of region’s largest Cleanup crews have been working in subzero temperatures to sop up crude oil and soiled snow near northern Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay after what looks to be one of the largest spills ever in the region. The source of the crud(e) was discovered last Thursday […]
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Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes From a Catastrophe gives climate change a human face
Elizabeth Kolbert began building a fan base among political junkies with a series of vivid New Yorker profiles that were collected in 2004’s The Prophet of Love. Ranging from George Pataki and Hillary Clinton to Regis Philbin and Al Sharpton, from title character Rudy Giuliani to former Weatherman Kathy Boudin, Kolbert’s pieces were filled with […]
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Three new books put the spotlight on our warming world
Here at Grist, we tend to be good at detecting extremely subtle patterns. Like, say, the way certain politicians keep trying to drill in certain areas. Or the way love letters inevitably come after we publish a striking photo that might portray Umbra Fisk. Or the number of rainy days in a row outside our […]
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Fools Russia In
Russia to build oil pipeline within half-mile of world’s deepest lake A 2,550-mile-long oil pipeline is set to be built within 900 yards of the world’s deepest lake. And really, what could go wrong? Lake Baikal — home to a variety of unique species of flora and fauna and over 20 percent of the planet’s […]
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An interview with the founder of Worldwatch and Earth Policy Institute
There are few titans remaining in the environmental world — figures that command respect not only inside the movement but in the larger global political milieu as well. Lester Brown is one of them. In 1974, he founded the Worldwatch Institute, one of the first think tanks to focus on the global environmental situation (its […]
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Any Portugal in a Wind Storm
Portugal gives wind power a big bear hug; England gives it the finger Portugal is already building the world’s largest solar power plant; now, to make us feel even worse about ourselves, it’s planning a huge new project to more than double its wind-energy capacity. A contractor bid will be accepted by this summer for […]
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Portraits of loss in the wake of Katrina
On a misty November morning in 2005, I was photographing in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward neighborhood a few blocks from where one of the levees had failed 10 weeks earlier. Squatting in a driveway in foul-smelling mud, adjusting the knobs on my camera, I stood up to stretch my back and noticed a man sitting […]
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Beetle Bailiwick
Warmer B.C. ravaged by beetles, haunted by dead birds The flora and fauna of British Columbia, Canada, are having a rough go of global warming. B.C. forests are suffering through a massive insect infestation that’s ravaging an area three times the size of Maryland. The mountain pine beetle can’t survive severe cold, but milder winters […]
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Global Warring
Climate change a major security problem, says U.K. defense chief U.K. Defense Secretary John Reid has echoed a growing number of analysts by stressing that global warming is not just a weather problem, or a health problem, or a problem for biodiversity. It’s a global security problem. In a Monday speech, Reid called on the […]
