Climate Climate & Energy

When inheriting the earth isn’t such a good deal

I’ve seen my future, and it’s scary. It involves hurricanes, floods, destruction, mass evacuations, disease, and death. Hurricane Katrina and the week after it were a serious wakeup call for me. Youth the force, Luke. Climate change promises me that in my lifetime, I will experience many more events like this. As a young person, […]

Stan in the Place Where You Live

Mexico and Central America reel under latest gulf hurricane The name “Stan” does not typically inspire fear (even if it’s better than “Stanley”), but a hurricane with that moniker has been wreaking havoc down south. In what is sure to be another blow to North America’s hobbled energy supply, all three of Mexico’s crude-oil loading […]

We must hit the streets to demand action on global warming

“Given the urgency and magnitude of the escalating pace of climate change, the only hope lies in a rapid and unprecedented mobilization of humanity around this issue … that some spark might ignite a massive uprising of popular will around a unifying movement for social survival and the promise it holds for a more prosperous, […]

Toujours Gas

France contending with bovine-source greenhouse gases France’s 20 million cows account for 6.5 percent of the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Researcher Benoit Leguet of the Climate Mission of Caisse des Depots, a state-owned French bank, contends that bovine belches produce about 28.6 million tons of globe-warming gases annually, primarily methane and nitrous oxide. Cow poop (or […]

What Pricey Glory

Carbon sequestration a pricey but feasible way to curb global warming Carbon sequestration — capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions — isn’t a cheap or easy solution to global warming, but it’s doable. A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds that with major investments, up to 40 percent of CO2 emissions […]

Arctic You Glad We Didn’t Say Banana

Arctic ice cap is melting fast, say scientists The Arctic ice cap has shriveled to its smallest size in a century; at this rate of shrinkage, the summer cap may vanish by 2060. Researchers who compiled the data say the process appears to have become self-sustaining: As ice melts, there’s more water, which absorbs more […]

Apollo Alliance now shooting for the statehouse instead of the moon

By now the mission of the two-year-old D.C.-based Apollo Alliance — to mobilize a grand-scale federal commitment to energy independence, with the triple-whammy promise of creating good jobs with new technology, bolstering national security with energy independence, and saving the planet from carbon emissions — has become something of a cliché. Apollo: No longer shooting […]

Sacrificial Sham

Bush asks Americans to avoid unnecessary car trips and save energy President Bush yesterday called on Americans to drive less and conserve gas. “We can all pitch in,” he said. Of course, “all” is relative: Though the president directed federal agencies to reduce energy use, Republican congressional leaders were meeting even as he spoke to […]

London Brawling

Leading U.K. scientist excoriates U.S. on climate-disruption obstruction As superstorm Hurricane Rita bears down on Texas and Louisiana, Sir John Lawton, chairman of the U.K.’s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, told the Independent that neoconservatives in the U.S. ought to reconsider their obstructionist stance on climate change. “If this makes the climate loonies in the […]

Swedes aim to phase out fossil fuels by 2020

To counteract today's totally bummer crop of news, a cheery development from my peeps, the Swedes:

Prime Minister Goran Persson announced this week that Sweden will try to end its dependency on fossil fuels in 15 years by, among other things, ramping up use of wind power, boosting research into renewable-energy technologies, and providing incentives for renewable power and clean cars. Swede dreams are made of this ...