The poster child of human environmental destruction in the 90’s is still imperiled, even if the focus has shifted to global warming. Of course the two are intimately related, and besides the forests’ huge impacts on local watersheds—effectively creating their own rain—the forests’ trees and soils obviously have a major impact on the carbon cycle. Still, the onslaught upon the lungs of the world is not only unrelenting but expanding.
Given the monopolistic and powerful positions adopted by the oil companies since the beginning of the modern oil age in the nineteenth century, it is almost inevitable that their entry into the renewable arena will not be without problems. — ScienceBlog.com
It appears the Obama Administration is starting to eerily resemble the Bush Administration, at least when it comes to energy policy. In last week’s State of the Union address, President Obama touched on—albeit briefly—clean energy standards and climate change.…
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is the first mandatory, market-based effort in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ten Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states haved capped and will reduce CO2 emissions from the [electric] power sector 10% by 2018.
States sell nearly all emission allowances through auctions and invest proceeds in consumer benefits: energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other clean energy technologies. RGGI will spur innovation in the clean energy economy and create green jobs in each state.
A huge Alaskan oil spill, is one of the worst on record, according to Alaskan environmental officials (Greenwire). Yet it seems to have received fairly little coverage outside of some wire stories and local press.
The leak occurred on a North Slope pipeline operated by BP, which has had other problems in recent years including the 2006 spill in Prudhoe Bay. Whatever happened to “Beyond Petroleum?”
…the United States should act to curb emissions.
“Many observers look at economists as skeptics of the need for (climate) mitigation,” says economist Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. But “most accept the unquestionable consensus from the natural scientist that the planet is warming and humans are to blame.” —Dan Vergano, USA Today
The cover story of the current issue of MIT’s Technology Review, “Natural Gas Changes the Energy Map,” discusses the recent, (un)fortunate discovery of extremely large natural gas deposits in U.S.
The issue also includes a “briefing” on the various intersections of transportation and energy, and that explains this post’s title: CNG mail trucks and buses, the two major inroads of methane into transit.
There is a battle raging in Alaska: State government vs. the polar bear. Or, to put it more bluntly: resource development vs. environmental conservation. While this battle is nothing new to Alaska, especially given the impending threats of climate change on regional wilderness, which includes the polar bear’s natural habitat.…
In New Haven, West Virginia, the Mountaineer Power Plant is about to embark on the world’s first attempt to capture and bury CO2 from a coal-fired power plant (NYTimes). As early as this week, fluid CO2 will be pumped into sandstone 7,800 feet underground and then into dolomite 400 feet below that; the liquid carbon dioxide is 30 to 40 feet high and hundreds of yards in length.…
Yesterday afternoon the Obama administration released a proposal for new CAFE standards of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, up from the current 27.5 MPG. Soon the average automobile may finally get significantly better mileage than the Model T.…
