The year is certainly not over yet – the annual international UN climate conference is ongoing in South Africa for the next ten days. Nevertheless, here’s a quick look at what we’ve seen – and what we might expect in 2012. Casting back to my look at 2010 and beyond, I predicted witch hunts from […]
As you undoubtedly know, thousands of people, young and old, descended on Washington on November 6th, ringed the White House and told the President that the Keystone XL pipeline was not in the best interests of either the US or the planet. The fact of the turnout was great news in itself, but even better […]
As I noted recently, the pressure is building on the Keystone XL pipeline. 350.org and the many brothers and sisters who have been affiliating themselves with their actions to stop the pipeline – and indeed the tar sands development in Alberta – were in Washington in August and exercised their civil disobedience muscles. Hundreds were […]
I’ve written about or referenced the Keystone XL project and the Alberta tar sands a fair number of times, including at this post for DeSmogBlog. The picture shows protesters at the White House last summer. The folks at 350.org led the demonstrations there and are organizing another action for November 6th. The pipeline and the […]
I went down across the street from the United Nations in New York a couple of Saturdays ago and took part in a medium-sized but interesting demonstration of concern about climate change. It was part of the “Moving Planet” series of demonstrations all over the world, organized by 350.org, that produced over 2,000 events in […]
Can you imagine a world without oil? I can. Even with all the oil in which we’re swimming today – as pictured by this excellent graphic from the latest issue of Momentum from the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota – I can see a world powered by renewables, generating electricity […]
In an op-ed last week at the NY Times, Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute, reiterated the same old tired and tiresome nonsense about renewable energy: It’s not good enough to get the job done. As I’ve noted here a number of times, that particular Big Lie is easily refuted. See 80% Renewable – The […]
There is an important series well underway at the Vancouver Observer: “The Big Grab.” It’s about how the tar sands industry is forcing choices on Canadians that they would not otherwise have to make in the absence of all the activity in Alberta. What’s particularly important about this series, it seems to me, is that […]
I have written on a number of occasions here about the Alberta tar sands. Like many environmentalists, I find the idea of ripping tar out of the ground with excavators the size of aircraft carriers – or sucking it up after spending months softening it with injected steam – repellent. The greenhouse gas implications are […]
I’m very happy that I’ve got a two-part article, starting today, in DeSmogBlog, the prestigious environmental blog, voted Canada’s “Best Group Blog.” I’m looking once again at the Canadian tar sands, from the point of view of energy security this time. It turns out that American security is diminished by the use of tar sands […]
I wouldn’t be the first person to analogize Americans’ thirst to fossil fuels to an addiction. The arch-environmentalist George W. Bush said the US was “addicted to oil” in his State of the Union address in 2006. What we do for the Mexican drug gangs in terms of addiction to their products while advancing their […]
After some reflection, I can think of nothing good to say about the Alberta tar sands. The best thing that most people say here is that Canada is not Saudi Arabia or Venezuela and therefore if the US is importing billions of barrels a year (4.28 in 2009), then we’re getting more (900 million) from […]
I have never been one to diminish the chutzpah of folks trying to protect their special interests by embellishing the truth. I’m actually reading a particularly compelling – often horrifying – book right now called Merchants of Doubt. There are all sorts of obfuscation, misinformation, disinformation, lies, and other forms of wrong dealing documented in […]
In the spirit of yesterday’s photos of the Gulf of Mexico, this photo essay from Newsweek is also resonant. I would’ve added the Canadian tar sands and mountaintop removal mining.
Here are some updates on the carbon-intensive Alberta tar sands projects. First, the FT’s “Energy Source” blog reports on recent analysis from Citigroup that says, among other things, “It is not a fuel source that sits naturally within a low carbon economy and is unlikely to be a strategic winner as climate regulation tightens, albeit […]