Steve LeVine at Foreign Policy has a real interesting analysis (that doubles as a spanking of Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short,) on why the shale gas industry, in the face of increasing political pressure, is taking a don’t worry, be happy posture.
Nothing spreads awareness of an issue more than when it breaks through into Pop Culture. Here’s a new one from Australia’s New Zealand’s Hungry Beast. And in a similar musical vein (H/T: Bryan Walsh), here’s another, a neat collaboration between an NYU journalism class and an investigative journalism site.
UPDATE: Whoops! No sooner did I hit the publish button did I discover that the Coal Cares campaign is an elaborate parody. But it seems real if you know the history of various industry campaigns, which is what the rest of my post is about. Lots of people are shaking their heads over this Coal Cares…Continue Reading…
There is this assumption in environmental and climate circles that the Republican party represents (in the United States) the biggest obstacle to political progress on climate change. Recent developments certainly support this view. Since 2009, the GOP has become increasingly hostile to climate science. Republican presidential hopefuls are marching to this same Tea Party beat (even those…Continue Reading…
I got something for everyone. New research confirms that natural gas drilling is polluting drinking water. Taking note of this and the previous commotion over the Cornell study, Ronald Baily at Reason harrumphs: Environmentalists Were for Fracking Before They Were Against it Whatever, says Matt Ridley. Shale is bountiful and cheap! Finally, Zeke Hausfather does a…Continue Reading…
Poor Newt. The preemptive spanks came early and hard. Even his scrap-the-EPA mantra hasn’t won over Marc Morano, who this morning emailed a blistering missive to everyone in his rolodex. UPDATE: Great post headline from Andrew Sullivan, who provides an excellent round-up of reax, including this killer campaign slogan for Newt: “Gingrich 2012: He will always…Continue Reading…
If you read Andy Revkin’s dispatch from this one-day conference in London on the Anthropocene concept, you’ll discover: I’m attending because of a quirky role I played almost 20 years ago in laying the groundwork for this concept of humans as a geological force. I’m starting to think Andy is the Zelig of the environmental…Continue Reading…
We are living in strange times. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a conservative politician and until a few months ago, a longtime supporter of nuclear power, has vowed to shutter her nation’s 17 nuclear reactors and make renewable power, such as wind and solar, Germany’s dominant source of energy by 2030. Meanwhile, staunch British environmentalist George Monbiot, the…Continue Reading…
The lessons to be learned after reading this story by John Otis in Time magazine couldn’t be clearer. Here’s the set-up, describing the situation in Colombia: Amid 11 months of nearly nonstop rain, dykes have burst and rivers have topped their banks, inundating communities, cattle ranches, and croplands in 28 of Colombia’s 32 departments. Waterlogged…Continue Reading…
This is a cool story: David Goodrich doesn’t just think there is a global issue with climate change, he says he knows it. And he’s so sure of the problem that he is willing to bike across country educating students about it. Goodrich, 58, of Rockville recently retired as director of the Climate Observation Division with…Continue Reading…