In a warmed world, even food won’t be as good for you

Humanity is on the threshold of a century of extraordinary bounty, courtesy of global climate change. That’s the opinion of...

Necessary evil, or just evil?

The other day Clark expressed some ambivalence about cost-benefit analyses in the realm of environmental policy.

It so happens Dan Phaneuf at the Environmental Economics blog has some thoughts on that very matter.

For my part, I think Phaneuf -- whose comments are generally quite sensible -- underplays the risks of CBA. He acknowledges:

Libertarians seem oddly silent on the subject of subsidies that benefit the oil and gas industries.

Warning: This post is just as wonky and boring as the title makes it sound.

This essay by Jerry Taylor and Peter VanDoren of the Cato Institute perfectly captures a real confusion I have about libertarians.

They discuss the two versions of the energy bill -- House and Senate -- and say pretty much what you'd expect libertarians to say: Every provision that has government giving money to a market actor, taking money from a market actor, or restricting the behavior of a market actor is bad, bad, bad.

Okay, fine. But what's the motivation?

Here are the two possible versions of libertarianism:

David B. Williams sends dispatches from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

David B. Williams is a freelance natural-history writer based in Seattle. He is the author of The Street-Smart Naturalist: Field...

Thoreau vs. central climate control

It's hot. I am coming to understand that spending the summer outside and below the Mason-Dixon line is slightly less pleasant than spending the summer outside and in the Green Mountains, where I read Walden (not for the first time) last summer (it's a different experience when you read it in the woods).

But the combination of those two experiences has got me thinking. Thoreau talks about the "animal heat" that we all need to maintain if we're going to stay alive. He notes that in warmer weather, we consume less food than in colder weather. Makes sense -- we need less fuel to keep our bodies at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit if the ambient temperature is close to it anyway.

So global warming is good, right?

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.

New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman chats about global warming and the heated climate around the energy bi

He may hail from an energy state out West, and he may be a soft-spoken moderate, but Jeff Bingaman, Democratic...

What a difference an ice sheet makes

Or, three. Not to mention a picture of what Britain will look like in 200 years if climate change melts the globe's three largest ice sheets. According to today's Scotsman, a new study suggests sea levels would rise some 275 feet. The U.K. mainland would turn into a North Sea Polynesia, with coastal towns and many cities disappearing completely. The center of London would be underwater. Hm -- those zombies in 28 Days Later are starting to look like a more manageable end-of-the-world scenario by the minute.

Of course, the big queston here is: how likely is this? And that's where respectable scientists disagree.

Readers talk back about poverty, population, and biodiesel

  Re: Forgive Us Our Debts Dear Editor: I was angered by Jon Christensen’s assertion that conservationists and environmentalists are...