Articles by Sarah Laskow

Australia is so, so screwed

It's possible that the 19th century British powers-that-be were just running a really, really long con when they sent their convicts to settle Australia, because anyone who lives there now is royally screwed. In Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell chronicles exactly how screwed. (Answer: Royally.)

In the few weeks he was there, Goodell encountered:

a record heat wave, a crippling drought, bush fires, floods that swamped an area the size of France and Germany combined, even a plague of locusts.

And in the longer term,

What water is left is becoming increasingly salty and unusable, raising the question of whether Australia, long a major food exporter, will be able to feed itself in the coming dec­ades. The oceans are getting warmer and more acidic, leading to the all-but-certain death of the Great Barrier Reef within 40 years. Homes along the Gold Coast are being swept away, koala bears face extinction in the wild, and farmers, their crops shriveled by drought, are shooting themselves in despair.

Living off the grid: SUPER FUN

You know that fantasy you have where you move to Maine, go off the grid, and raise your children to know what nature and good old American values are like? Well, one family is living that fantasy, and writing about it for The New York Times.

All summer, Craig and Susannah Hopkins Leisher have been living with their three sons in a cabin in the Maine woods.

Critical List: E.U. could ban tar-sands oil; solar industry ‘a real mess’

Yesterday, an E.U. commission got behind environmental standards that could keep tar-sands oil from being used in Europe.

Another nuclear reactor in Japan shut down.

Clean energy investments can only go so far in keeping China's emissions down. The country will meet its environmental goals in the short term, researchers say, but it’s growing too fast for its emissions to stay manageable for long.

World's second tallest structure will power 100,000 homes a day with hot air

If a clean energy project in the Arizona desert goes forward, the second tallest structure on Earth will be a 2,600-foot solar updraft tower, which could last 80 years and generate 200 MW of electricity each day -- using only hot air. (Insert your own joke about how we could power Cleveland with Bill O’Reilly.)

The tower works on the principle that hot air rises. In this case, it rises through the tower, turning turbines as it goes. The tower uses no water, and it works pretty much all the time, unlike wind and solar projects. (At night, the ground is still letting off the heat it captured during the day, so there's still hot air available to float upward.)