Climate Change

I had an interesting visit the other day, along with some other local climate change folks, at the British Consulate-General in New York.  Over lunch, members of the Climate & Energy team talked with us about developments in the UK, some of the politics here in the US, and clean tech initiatives.  I want to […]

David Leonhardt, an economics columnist and blogger for the “NY Times,” has just taken a good swing at the compelling arguments for a cap-and-trade bill.  See Saving Energy, and Its Cost.   (For a recent post from me on this and an exchange with an opponent, see The Facts of Cap and Trade.)  Leonhardt has about […]

We are six months out from Copenhagen and further talks in Bonn, where the UNFCCC is headquartered, have just concluded.  The release from the UNFCCC says the recent talks made “progress on fleshing out specifics” for a global climate change regime.  There were 5,500 participants, including government delegates from over 180 countries, and reps from […]

When Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski proposed a change in how the Clean Air Act is administered, I was shocked but not surprised.  See The Reaction from January.  Thankfully, her resolution was defeated in the US Senate yesterday.  This was an attempt at a radical reconfiguring of how environmental law has been practiced in this country […]

One of the recurring leitmotifs in this past winter’s hyper-inflated media coverage of the “debate” about climate science was that the public doesn’t care about the issue anymore anyway, and that the snow in Virginia and the stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit had soured people on the science, even though it has been […]

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 […]

The Danes have a lot to teach us.  Samsø is a lab for the rest of the world on how to achieve carbon neutrality.  Betsy Kolbert wrote a wonderful piece a couple of years ago:  The Island in the Wind.  And I’ve written here a few times about “convergence” and how we can have health […]

Now might be a good time to talk again about the promise of the electric or fuel-cell vehicle.  Given the Gulf of Mexico disaster, one would hope that it must start to penetrate, sooner rather than later, that it is past time to leave the internal combustion engine behind.  The naysayers talk about the “romance” […]

This is a characteristically compelling cover from “The New Yorker.” I do continue to be astonished that, after all these years and all the blood and treasure we’ve squandered for this fool’s gold, we’re still destroying ourselves and the earth we call home by relentlessly extracting, transporting and burning oil.

I attended this recent biannual conference examining key and emerging environmental issues in the EPA Region 2 area.  It was organized by Columbia Law School’s Center for Climate Change Law (CCCL).  There was a lot of interesting discussion of climate change and air pollution, including some of the critically important ins and outs of litigation […]

Fast Forward – Ethics and Politics in the Age of Global Warming is the title of a book just out from two international relations heavyweights at Brookings.  Strobe Talbott was deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration and William J. Antholis worked at the National Security Council and at State, and was director of […]

The Rolling Stones knew it years ago.*  Now we’re catching up. I’ve written about natural gas a few times, basically to the effect that it’s got enormous potential as a transition fuel for many purposes as we wend our way, sooner rather than later, toward a renewable future.  This is what the prophetic Barry Commoner […]