Environment and Energy
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Ladies First, Please
Is climate change gender-neutral? Not according to the U.N. Population Fund, which earlier today released a report arguing that women suffer disproportionately from the impacts of global warming. Especially in developing countries, they can't flee changes like desertification and sea-level rise as e …
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Carbon Sinks Losing Their Superpowers
One of the uncertainties in predicting how the climate will respond to all the greenhouse gases we're belching up into the atmosphere is what will happen with the world's carbon sinks. Trees, ocean, and even the soil all absorb a huge fraction of the industrial carbon-dioxide we produce each year. B …
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Bluefin: Will You Be the Last to Eat One?
Hold the bluefin tuna—please. That's what scientists were urging last week at the annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT). Unless there's a total ban on catching Atlantic bluefin tuna this year, scientists argued, populations might collapse …
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Has The Climate Bill Been Delayed? Not Really.
The Wall Street Journal blared the news today that the Senate won't vote on a climate bill until "some time in the spring," according to Majority Leader Harry Reid. Is that a shock? A new setback? Not that I can tell. The reporter, Ian Talley, insists that Reid's words reflect a …
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Road Trains Of The Future
Via Tom Lawasky, the E.U.'s now testing out "road trains" in Britain, Spain, and Sweden as a way to make long-distance car travel more enjoyable. And what, pray tell, are road trains? Here's how a road train works: the convoy is controlled by a lead vehicle with a professional driver at …
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Why France Is Mulling A Carbon Tax
Yesterday, I noted that Europe's cap-and-trade system seems to be faring pretty well at cutting CO2 emissions. As a partial counterpoint, though, check out Eloi Laurent's analysis of the ongoing carbon-tax debate in France. The story here is that the E.U. cap-and-trade system has driven down emissio …
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Would Weaker Targets Mean A Cheaper Climate Bill?
As Lisa Lerer reports in Politico today, one of the steepest hurdles looming over the Senate climate bill is the fact that there are a lot of coal-state Democrats out there who want to see major changes to the legislation before they'll vote for it. Last week, 14 senators wrote Harry Reid demanding …
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Ice Ages And Coal Explosions
When people talk about climate change, it's common to envision a slow, drawn-out process that takes decades or longer to unfold. But, looking back through the historical record, rapid Day After Tomorrow-type shifts aren't exactly impossible. A new analysis of Greenland ice cores, led by William Patt …
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Obama Takes Baby Steps In Beijing
With the global talks over a climate treaty decelerating, Obama's trying to see if there's a side deal to strike with China—something that could ease the worldwide talks along. But so far, progress has been meager. Earlier today, Obama met with Chinese President Hu Jintao and the two announced …
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What *Can't* You Do With Leftover Food?
A new recycling idea is slowly catching on in restaurants and cities around the United States—the "zero waste" movement. The concept's simple enough: Produce less, avoid plastics and packaging that aren't biodegradable, recycle and compost what you can. With food waste making up some …
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Putting Leftover Food To Work
A new recycling idea is slowly catching on in restaurants and cities around the United States—the "zero waste" movement. The concept's simple enough: Produce less, avoid plastics and packaging that aren't biodegradable, recycle and compost what you can. With food waste making up some …
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Please Don't Provoke the Supervolcano
Earlier today I was nodding along to Chris Orr's good-humored critique of 2012, but, you know, news like this makes me think more people really need to see the movie and learn not to antagonize supervolcanoes: To ancient Romans the Phlegraean Fields hosted the entrance to Hades. In modern times it …
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What'll It Take For Electric Cars To Catch On?
Via Elana Schor, a group of automakers, utilities, and shipping companies have banded together to form the Electrification Coalition, which will lobby for a massive federal push toward electric vehicles in the coming months. The coalition's extensive "roadmap" argues that plug-in hybrids a …
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Is Europe Really On Track To Meet Its Kyoto Goals?
There's a fairly basic question about climate policy that gets asked a lot: Can a cap-and-trade program actually cut carbon-dioxide emissions? Set aside the question of cost and the endless debate over whether a mythical carbon tax would be sleeker. Can a cap on carbon actually do what it's supposed …
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Las Vegas Nervously Watches The Water Drop
What's going to happen to Las Vegas if temperatures keep rising? The city needs water, after all, and most models predict that the Colorado river will start shriveling up if the West keeps getting hotter—runoff from mountain snowpack could drop anywhere from 5 percent to 25 percent by mid-cent …
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Are Inner-City Schools An Environmental Issue?
Over at NRDC's Switchboard blog, Kaid Benfield has a couple of posts lamenting the fact that the environmental movement devotes relatively scant attention to issues like urban redevelopment or inner-city schools. Those sorts of topics may sound far afield, but they're really not. Boosting the number …
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Obama Lowers Expectations For Copenhagen. Now What?
On Sunday, Obama finally acknowledged what was becoming agonizingly evident: There's just no way world leaders are going to hammer out a legally binding global climate treaty at the Copenhagen summit in December. A few countries, like Britain, didn't seem overly thrilled with the concession, since t …
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Water On The Moon--Now We Can Finally Invade Mars
Hmm… scientists are now saying "unequivocally" that they've discovered considerable amounts water on the moon's south pole after bombing the region with a satellite last month and kicking up debris. I've always wondered what the big deal with water on the moon is. Why should we care …
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The Future Of Road Trains
Via Tom Lawasky, the E.U.'s ">now testing out "road trains" in Britain, Spain, and Sweden as a way to make long-distance car travel more enjoyable. And what, pray tell, are road trains? Here's how a road train works: the convoy is controlled by a lead vehicle with a professional driver a …
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Can We Build Our Way to Reduced Carbon Emissions?
The House passed their climate change bill last spring, and the Senate Environmental and Public Works (EPW) Committee passed their version last week. It now moves on to the Finance Committee and perhaps Agriculture. It will be well into next year by the time the bill gets to the Senate floor. The Ho …
Environment and Energy
