Climate Technology
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Chevy Volt not so revolutionary
For those of you who missed it, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz hit the talk show circuit last week to talk up the latest incarnation of the Chevy Volt (more on his boneheaded climate change comments here and here). The marketing goal is to create the public perception that the Volt is an electric car […]
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Friends of the Earth says anti-regulation approach causes environmental destruction
Friends of the Earth issued a statement today arguing against the Bush administration’s proposed $700 billion bailout of the troubled U.S. financial system. “This financial crisis has exposed the right wing’s anti-regulation philosophy as an abject failure,” said Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder. “This hands-off approach to managing the economy has resulted in […]
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Failing to address climate change could hurt industry, report finds
Failing to address climate change could significantly hurt many industries in the world economy that are together worth around $7 trillion, according to a report by the United Kingdom’s Carbon Trust. The report examined six different sectors of the world economy — aluminum, automotive, building materials, consumer electronics, oil and gas, and, uh … brewing […]
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GM flack jumps into Huffington Post fray to defend exec’s climate-change skepticism
We posted last week about GM Vice Chair Bob Lutz expressing a little climate-change skepticism on The Colbert Report. Josh Nelson wrote about it as well over on Huffington Post, and thus began an online conversation with GM’s director of news relations, Tom Wilkinson, who defended both Lutz and the company’s environmental policies. “There is […]
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Is the financial crisis more dire than the climate crisis?
Not even close. If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment. So warned IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri last fall when the IPCC released its major multi-year report synthesizing our understanding of climate science. And remember, […]
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Ramblings on the financial crisis
Based on my own extensive analysis of the ongoing financial crisis, I’ve come to the following conclusions: Nobody clearly understands how we got in this situation. Nobody clearly understands what situation we are in. Nobody clearly understands what’s going to happen next. Despite all this, every single human being with access to a keyboard and […]
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One trillion for billionares and pennies for solar?
I was going to post on the money we are pouring into this bailout compared to what we get for green investment. But John McGrath said it for me: …The very first things Barack Obama should do when inaugurated is 1) propose legislation to the U.S. Congress creating single-payer healthcare in America, and 2) initiate […]
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Hazardous substances still a mainstay for Big Chemical
The good news: some companies are moving toward nontoxic chemicals and products. The bad news: many aren’t. In a 2007 report, consultants hired by Big Chemical concluded that the industry’s eco-initiatives are “reactive, not proactive,” and that it “has a very short-term focus and discounts long-term issues.” There is, wrote the consultants, “a lack of […]
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A weak economy brings a diminished appetite for curbs on carbon emissions
The Freakonomics blog offers up a long-ish but lucid discussion of the ongoing financial crisis. I recommend the whole thing, but in a nutshell: Financial institutions borrow money all the time to fund their investments. When the real estate bubble burst, a lot of those investments lost value rapidly, leaving banks such as Bear Stearns […]
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From the mouths of oil executives …
“There is certainly some potential. But to me the biggest potential in America that is not exploited is energy savings. There is such an immense opportunity.” — Paolo Scaroni, chief executive of Italian oil giant ENI, on offshore drilling
