In March, several green groups, notably the Environmental Defense Fund, formed a partnership with Chevron and other energy companies to, as the LA Times reported, provide more stringent standards for fracking of natural gas in parts of the eastern United States. The collaboration, which also includes several philanthropies, has been formalized with a non-profit organization called…Continue Reading…
As it becomes increasingly evident that a switch from coal to natural gas is reducing energy-related carbon emissions in the United States–which is a net plus if you care about climate change– opponents of fracking find themselves being asked to choose between the lesser of two evils. That is a debate in of itself worth…Continue Reading…
To frack or not to frack seems like a good question to ask in the context of the climate debate. To ignore it or dismiss it out of hand won’t make it go away. And now that Michael Bloomberg and a leading environmental organization are teaming up to make fracking environmentally friendly, you can bet…Continue Reading…
Greens who care most about global warming are in a tough spot. One of the biggest climate killers is coal, a 19th century fuel that may bake the planet well into the 21st century. As Jeff Goodell notes in Rolling Stone, We still burn nearly a billion tons of it a year in America, almost…Continue Reading…
That’s my translation of Monbiot’s position on the huge gas reserves recently discovered in the UK. Today, in a follow-up post, he writes that any shale gas finds raise our exploitable reserves of fossil fuels, just as we should be reducing them. The world’s minerals companies have already found far greater reserves than we can afford to…Continue Reading…
This should be interesting to watch play out: The shakeup over shale gas — a newly available fuel that has overturned assumptions about energy, climate-change and geopolitics — has now stretched across the Atlantic to England. A drilling company backed by John Browne, the former CEO of BP, says it has discovered the gas equivalent of…Continue Reading…
With stories such as this and this becoming more common, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone would show why energy security is no longer a winning issue for climate change advocates. Today, Michael Lind makes the case in Salon: As everyone who follows news about energy knows by now, in…Continue Reading…
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.
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…
Over at Climate Central, I ask if the controversial Cornell study will undermine a tenuous alliance built on disparate interests.