Utility executives that had favored the failed cap & trade bill in Congress are moving on, reports the WSJ: In a blueprint released last week, Exelon executives said their 13-state region could achieve reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions nearly equal to what federal legislation might have achieved in the next decade by pressing ahead with activities…Continue Reading…
James Fallows has a cover story on the inevitability of coal in The Atlantic magazine that is a must-read. The piece cogently lays out why coal is king and why it must be made to be clean. The story is already prompting knee-jerk annoyance in predictable places. More on that in a minute. Here’s the…Continue Reading…
There’s a new climate & energy policy debate brewing. It could get interesting fast, judging by the crossfire that flew on wed alone. Here’s the abridged version: First comes the release of a bipartisan “white paper” that argues for public investment in energy innovation as the best way to end reliance on fossil fuels. It…Continue Reading…
In a longish essay in the Wall Street Journal weekend edition, Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, tells a story about why being green is hard. My wife and I recently built what is arguably the greenest home for miles around. OK, stop. This is a good time to define “green.” The greenest home is…Continue Reading…
The New Security Beat continues to distinguish itself as a forum for razor sharp ideas and perspectives on the environment/security nexus. Last week, I meant to flag this perceptive analysis on the crosscurrents roiling Yemen, by Schuyler Null. (If you’ve been following the international news on Yemen and neighboring Somalia this past year, you’ll know…Continue Reading…
One of the catch-phrases President Obama didn’t use in his much parsed Oval Office speech on Tuesday was energy security. He did, however, make a glancing, split-second reference when discussing the costs associated with a transition from fossil fuels to a clean energy economy (emphasis added): And there are some who believe that we can’t…Continue Reading…
The tweety and bloggy opiners who care most about climate change and energy policy were mostly left cold by President Obama’s big speech last night. Here’s an arbitrary round-up that captures the varying reax: MoJo’s Kevin Drum panned it. The Atlantic’s Joshua Green said it was a “decent speech, but he [Obama] wimped out on…Continue Reading…
The NYT uses the Gulf oil disaster as a hook to examine the peak oil “collapsitarians.” Some of them are a bit overwrought, it seems, and want to do more than rub their worry beads. Fortunately, there’s a new cottage industry catering to their anxieties. The theme of the NYT story can be gleaned from…Continue Reading…
Yesterday, I took an expansive, meta perspective on who’s responsible for climate change and the U.S. addiction to fossil fuels. But make no mistake, the legacy of George W. Bush’s two terms, in all things related to domestic energy development, from deliberate lax oversight to eye-popping corruption, looms large today. Rebecca Lefton at The Center…Continue Reading…
That’s the clever headline for this NYT Green post, which recalls an interesting piece of litigation: Back in 2005, a group of landowners on the gulf coast filed a federal lawsuit against energy and chemical companies, arguing that they were directly responsible for greenhouse gas emissions that exacerbated the effects of Hurricane Katrina. It named…Continue Reading…