As a complement to the UNFCCC process that is building toward agreement in Copenhagen in December (I fervently hope), President Obama called for a series of meetings of the world’s major economies. These economies include the world’s largest contributors to climate change, including the top four of China, the US, Indonesia and Brazil. (Remember that […]
I’ve written about the truly heinous practice of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia a number of times, most recently here and here. An amazing activist, Maria Gunnoe, is featured in both the superb documentary, Burning the Future, and in the magisterial book Big Coal. Now Gunnoe has garnered international recognition for her work by winning […]
In Black Carbon in Waxman-Markey here from a few weeks ago, I noted that “The summary of Waxman-Markey says that black carbon ‘…is a major contributor to warming in the Arctic. EPA is directed in the draft to use its existing authority under the Clean Air Act to reduce emissions of black carbon domestically and […]
What could be a more quintessentially human activity? Our food tastes better and is usually much safer to eat when it’s cooked. (There is something to be said, don’t get me wrong, for the raw foods approach too. I’ve been a vegetarian for … what year is this? … a long time and I do […]
I have a very high regard for the reporting at the venerable “Economist.” (Somewhat less so for the editorial writers.) In a perfectly informative, relatively important article recently on water quality and quantity issues worldwide, I thought the writer overstepped the bounds of reason on one particular point. For the record, here is my letter […]
My colleague, Elizabeth Balkan, writing the other day at the FPA blog on Energy, had a good update on the state of affairs on REDD, forestry and climate change: Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Shaping Financing to Prevent Deforestation. She looks particularly at the Waxman-Markey draft and how it embraces this critical aspect of […]
As you remember, Dorothy and Toto got blown a little off course. Some coal-fired power plants have had a similar trial. See Coal Plants Blocked here from October 2007 and a follow-up story at Coal Takes Some Lumps from a year ago. It turns out that the company trying so desperately to site its plants […]
I was surprised to learn that the White House science advisor, John Holdren, who I have lauded here, along with most of the other Obama appointees working on energy, the environment and climate change, has said that geoengineering should not be “off the table.” See Obama climate adviser open to geo-engineering to tackle global warming […]
There are a series of UNFCCC meetings this year leading up to the Copenhagen Conference of the Parties – the 15th COP. As you know, Copenhagen is where the post-Kyoto agreement is going to be finalized. The first of the five planned negotiating sessions leading up to the COP wrapped up in Bonn last week. […]
A question arose for me the other day: How would the world regard the Skeptics/Denialists if they were Holocaust Deniers? The short answer is the “NY Times” wouldn’t have a cover story in their Sunday magazine on a prominent and well-regarded scientist who is, for whatever inexplicable reason and using whatever tortured logic, an outspoken […]
Here is a big boost for low-tech, low-cost, potentially very high-impact solutions to “dangerous anthropogenic interference” (DAI) with the climate system: a solar-powered cooker that costs less than $5 to build. I wrote about the FT’s Climate Change Challenge last month here. The FT and its partners, Forum for the Future and HP, are providing […]
This world icon is getting a makeover. The ESB is “…undergoing a major sustainability retrofit to become a leading example of economic and environmental revitalization.” This is a critical milestone in the battle to lower energy use and thus lower GHG emissions because the building is so famous and glamorous. The project partners have created […]
Computers – This is, as you might suspect, an area where lots of energy gets consumed. According to Emerson, at their “Energy Logic” webpage: “Data centers in the United States alone soaked up about 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), or $4.5 billion worth of electricity in 2006. If current energy usage trends continue, a U.S. Environmental […]
Black Carbon in Waxman-Markey – As we’ve seen here, particulates from uncombusted materials – coal, diesel, and biomass – have a much bigger impact on the climate than previously recognized, not to mention the devastating direct health impacts. (See under Soot here and at Black Carbon and Solar Cookers.) It is entirely worth noting that […]
Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Ed Markey, chair of the Energy and Environment subcommittee, have just released a “discussion draft” of a comprehensive clean energy and climate change bill. The legislation is titled “The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.” (Security is such a reassuring word, […]