Climate Technology

Millionaires Beg for Change

Business execs and military leaders smack down Bush energy policy Prominent business execs and retired military officers are down on their knees begging Congress and the Bush administration to cut U.S. dependence on oil. “It’s the height of folly for the U.S. to continue on this course, lest we have some major economic or national-security […]

An interview with Missouri farmer and ethanol co-op member Brian Miles

Cultivating change? Photo: iStockphoto Like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him, Brian Miles spends his days working the family farm. Unlike his forebears, however, he also sits on the board of Mid-Missouri Energy, a farmer-owned ethanol cooperative in Malta Bend, Mo. Grist talked to Miles about the present ethanol boom, the potential for an […]

An interview with Greasecar founder Justin Carven

Justin Carven. In the span of just two years, Justin Carven invented the first waste-oil conversion kit for diesel engines, graduated from Hampshire College, drove a vegetable-oil-fueled van across the country, and started his very own company. Six years later, Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems is selling so many conversion kits that Carven is talking about […]

Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla chats about the promise of ethanol

Venture capitalist and ethanol booster Vinod Khosla. Billionaires are piling onto the biofuels bandwagon. Bill Gates is doing it. Richard Branson is doing it. The Google guys are doing it. Less well-known is the billionaire who kicked off the whole trend: Vinod Khosla, a cofounder of Sun Microsystems and former partner with Kleiner Perkins, the […]

Richard Branson chats about embracing ethanol and slashing airplane emissions

Does a music mogul who signed the Rolling Stones and Janet Jackson have what it takes to make a pop star out of biofuels? Sir Richard. Earlier this fall, publicity-chasing British entrepreneur Richard Branson made a $3 billion bet that he could do just that — and help solve the climate crisis to boot — […]

An interview with Seattle biodiesel distributor Dan Freeman

Dan Freeman. As a kid, Dan Freeman experimented with using alcohol to run lawnmowers and minibikes. (Oh, to have been a fly on the wall for that parent-son conversation.) These days, he runs Dr. Dan’s Alternative Fuel Werks, a Seattle-based biodiesel retail and distribution company with customers ranging from school districts to organic farmers to […]

Friends in Flow Places

U.S. Interior lets oil-industry royalties slip away, investigation says An eight-month investigation by the U.S. Interior Department’s inspector general reveals that Big Oil may be skirting millions of dollars in annual gas and oil royalties while Interior officials grease the skids. Some of the juicier findings: officials said they’d reviewed 72 percent of revenues from […]

How cash and corporate pressure pushed ethanol to the fore

… got all liquored on that road house corn … — Tom Waits, “Gun Street Girl” Before it became widely used as a car fuel, ethanol was just grain liquor — and the federal government was not particularly kind to it. We pledge allegiance to ADM. Shortly after the American Revolution, the new government imposed […]

A Royal Al-ly

Gore lends heft to sustainable-business campaign launched by Prince Charles We were so excited when we saw that Prince was recruiting Al Gore for a green campaign. We loved thinking about the velveteen rocker and the ex-veep partying like it was 1999 again. But alas, it was gently pointed out to us that it’s Prince […]

Senators send letter to ExxonMobil

Today's Wall Street Journal printed a letter from Senators Snowe and Rockefeller to ExxonMobil (here) along with an editorial about the letter (here).

In the letter, Snowe and Rockefeller ask ExxonMobil to stop perpetuating the uncertainty agenda (which they refer to as the "obfuscation agenda"). The letter is similar in many respects to a letter sent to Exxon by the British Royal Society.

The editorial is a broadside against the Senators. How dare they write that letter! You can feel the anger in it -- I'm quite certain the first draft was written in all caps.

Here are a few thoughts: