The Financial Times had a great series of articles the other day in a special report on Energy-Efficient Buildings. The FT team on this, led by environmental reporter Fiona Harvey, covers topics from design, climate-proofing, and microgeneration to supply chains and waste reduction. Look at the interactive graphic, as an amuse gul: a blueprint for […]
The U.S. government is working to understand and combat the “swine flu” outbreak, it must also contend with the impact that swine flu fears are having on exports of U.S. pork products. So far, countries including China, Croatia, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Philippines, Russia, South Korea, Thailand, Ukraine have announced full or partial bans on pork […]
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 […]
New York Mayor Bloomberg harnessed the green power of Earth Day to unveil a plan that would require NYC buildings – responsible for 80% of the city’s emissions – to undergo regular energy audits and retrofits, as needed, in order to become more energy efficient. The announcement was made just a couple weeks after Bloomberg […]
OPEC and large Asian oil consuming countries led by Japan, India and China met on Sunday for the third Asian Ministerial Energy Roundtable. The group’s goal is to To foster dialogue between Asia’s resource producers, primarily Middle East countries, and consumers, such as China and India, and to send a message to the world 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 […]
Florida’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives supported a measure yesterday to allow drilling in state waters. It is a major change in policy as supporting such legislation even just a few years ago would have almost been political suicide as so many citizens in the state feared for the cleanliness of the their beaches. The likelihood […]
Shanghai, often recognized for its free-market tendencies and environmental leadership, is introducing China’s first municipal trading mechanism as a means to curb pollution. Last Friday, in advance of a major carbon trade industry event taking place in Beijing this week, word began surfacing in the Chinese media that Shanghai plans to pilot an emissions trading […]
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Yulia Tymoshenko, are set to meet on 29 April. The meeting comes nearly four months after disagreements over gas prices led to a standoff between the two nations, leaving a good portion of the continent without gas supplies in the dead of winter. Fortunately, the price […]
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 […]
The dramatic rescue of the Maersk Alabama’s captain Richard Phillips brought relief that his hostage crisis was resolved, but the dangers of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean continue. Somali pirates have not been slowed by the Maersk Alabama incident, continuing to regularly hijack ships to make money by ransoming the ship, […]