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 […]
We looked in the last post at the virtually limitless potential of renewables to supply all of our energy needs: electricity, heating and cooling, and transportation. Indications are that we are well advanced on this path. I tell people that if you’d told me a dozen years ago we were going to see the penetration […]
The indispensable (to me anyway) “NY Review of Books” has an insightful look at Bill McKibben’s new book, Eaarth. The reviewer is no less a personage than Nicholas Stern. In generally praising “McKibben’s engaging and persuasive book,” Lord Stern gives a particularly succinct summary of the history of the science and present state of the […]
Scrapping fossil fuel subsidies is the idea here. The caption is from today’s lead editorial in the “Financial Times.” Among its many felicitous effects, is the fact that “If effective in promoting efficient consumption, elimination would reduce the risk of runaway global warming.” The Third Assessment Report (2001) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change […]