Turns out the Apollo folks don’t like it either

Beneath the fold is an op-ed written in reaction to the energy bill by Robert Borosage and Joel Rogers. Borosage is co-director of the Campaign for America's Future and co-founder, with Rogers, of the Apollo Alliance.

A debate over environmental priorities never gets at the real point

J.H. Adler points us to a debate in the pages of Foreign Policy between Bjørn Lomborg and Carl Pope. Since I read the whole thing, here's the highlight reel, so you don't have to:

Pope: "The global environmental dilemma teems with both risks and opportunities."

Lomborg: "Yes, we have problems. But we have solved many more. Yes, we can solve those that remain, but not all at once. We need priorities."

P: "True, we need priorities. ... Having priorities doesn't always mean Sophie's choice."

L: "I'm glad you agree that we need priorities. But I worry that your commitment is rhetorical."

P: "No, Bjørn, Sophie's choice is avoidable."

L: "... You insist that there are no real trade-offs between the environment and prosperity. ... It is not that environmental projects are not worthwhile. ... Often, there are other, better projects that must come first."

P: "... You keep posing artificial choices... It is simply not the case that the world -- or the United States -- does only one thing at a time."

L: "Advocacy groups understandably want to focus on headline-grabbing issues ... But when we emphasize some problems, we get less focus on others."

P: "Bjørn, you ignorant slut ... "

Okay, that last one was an embellishment.

Their dependence on gaz guzzlers makes them highly vulnerable, says a new study

Ah, now we're talking. Earlier this week I was a bit snarky about this article, which flung broad statements about with very little empirical support (understandable, I guess, for a breezy op-ed).

But a new study that just came across my desk puts some teeth in the argument that going green is smart business strategy for automakers.

Jointly published by the U. of Michigan and NRDC, the study analyzes what would happen to the Big Three U.S. automakers in the event of an oil-price spike.

As I've mentioned before, the possibility of such a spike is not remote. With supply and demand in such tight and tenuous balance, anything -- domestic politics, terrorist attacks, accidents, you name it -- could cause major disruptions in the oil market. How would American companies weather such a storm? From the NRDC press release:

Another voice from the global South criticizes the tone deafness of Western aid orgs

Forgive me for highlighting a piece that does not explicitly tackle environmental issues. But this Washington Post op-ed on foreign assistance, by former Eritrean finance minister Gebreselassie Yosief Tesfamichael, contains lessons for conservationists, if we choose to hear them.

Should nuclear fusion be considered a green energy source?

Thanks to Treehugger for reminding me to blog about the cover story of National Geographic's August issue: Powering the Future. I'm sure some Gristmillians will find flaws in some of the article's assertions and statistics, but as Treehugger Michael Richard notes, it seems to be a good introductory piece for the uninitiated.

What I found of interest was the inclusion of fusion as a possible green energy source. I did a quick search of the Grist archives and found very little. So what is it doing in a NG feature story?

Here is how the section for fusion starts off:

Fusion is the gaudiest of hopes, the fire of the stars in the human hearth. Produced when two atoms fuse into one, fusion energy could satisfy huge chunks of future demand. The fuel would last millennia. Fusion would produce no long-lived radioactive waste and nothing for terrorists or governments to turn into weapons. It also requires some of the most complex machinery on Earth.

From what I read in NG, there seems to be no downside to fusion, assuming you can actually make it work. So, I headed over to the indispensable Wikipedia and dug a little deeper.

Attempts to introduce new species to city ecosystems are often doomed to failure.

An article in Pacific Northwest Magazine discussing Seattle's recurrent Canada goose problems got me thinking. Cities are primarily for people, and they have their own microenvironments. Some animals and plants thrive inside these ecosystems, and some do not. Creatures that can live among us already do. Attempts to introduce other species to please our sensibilities will more often than not turn into expensive failures or chronic damage-control exercises.

John G. Roberts’ enviro record not so green, but also not provoking a lot of protest

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Between the Devil and the Deep Green Supercenter

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