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Texas renewable energy schemes

What is the most inefficient way to make electricity? Answer: power an a 15% efficient* internal combustion engine with a liquid fuel made primarily from industrial food crops to spin a generator. Someone in Houston has come up with a brilliant way to dispose of, consume, use up biodiesel. It is just a matter of time now before someone starts using biodiesel to save water by flushing toilets with it. From Renewable Energy Access:

*another screw up pointed out by commenters

Are we willing to accept global warming in exchange for cheap energy?

According to the Washington Post, Midwesterners are building a raft of new coal plants because they "see no alternative." That puts in fairly stark terms the way energy debates proceed […]

Thank you from the Grist staff

A big old shout out to the kind folks at Hewlett-Packard, who through their Employee Product Gift Matching Program have helped Grist secure a new color laser printer and two […]

Cypress forests going down

A one-day phone campaign is underway today to try to get big retailers to stop selling mulch made from cypress trees.

If you would like to make a difference today, drop into this website and dial one or all three of the toll free numbers shown there. I was a little hesitant, you know, talking to a real person and all that but it turned out to be a nice experience. So, have some balls and make some calls. The operators are polite and pleasant and I have a feeling this might actually make a difference.

For a more balanced view of the situation check out this video.

AIT on Showtime

Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth will make the move to the small screen, appearing this Sunday night (8pm EDT) on Showtime. Check your local schedule.

Looking at the scope of the problem

The Global Business Network recently published a new paper -- with a new approach -- on the impacts of climate change.

Instead of beginning with carbon emissions and then calculating, with increasing uncertainty, the impacts on climate, the impacts of those changes on biophysical systems, and then the impacts of biophysical systems changes on your life, etc., down to fourth- and fifth-order effects, they take a different approach. They begin with "human and natural systems that are already in a state of dynamic tension" (i.e., vulnerable to being tipped past a tipping point) and then predict what might happen if climate change is added to these already stressed systems.

This, I think, is a better way of looking at the scope of the problem that climate change poses. But they say it better themselves. Go take a gander.

What Is This “Integrity” You Speak Of?

States undercharging big emitters for pollution In probably the first-ever instance of corporate polluters not being held accountable, a study has found that at least 18 states collected such low […]

Congrats to Fargo!

Seattle is in 7th heaven. The Earth Day Network has issued its Urban Environment Report, which "scores the current environmental performance of 72 of our nation’s cities based on over […]

Carbon offsets make for strange bedfellows

I sometimes joke that the one environmental topic that unites the far right and far left is a distate for carbon offsets. This, I should stress, is a joke -- overly broad, unfairly general, etc., etc.* But it is the case that the topic of carbon offsets occasionally makes for strange bedfellows.

The fake controversy over Al Gore's carbon footprint is a case in point. TerraPass recently had the pleasure of being featured on Glenn Beck's CNN program (Glenn Beck of Al Gore = Hitler fame).** We were declared a crock by Sean Hannity, and we were denounced by none other than Rush Limbaugh.

A sensible way to view them

Greg Easterbrook, whom I respect (even though I don't always agree with him) has an interesting op-ed in today's New York Times on carbon offsets.

He examines the issue and concludes that reducing greenhouse gases will be a boon for developing countries because it will be cheaper for us to pay them to reduce greenhouse gases than for us to.