The trouble with Chinatown
Ann proposes Chinatown as the greatest environmental movie of all time. Now, Chinatown is my favorite movie: the poster above is currently hanging on my office wall. it is a great movie. But Chinatown can't be a great environmental movie for one simple reason: It gets the environment wrong. The conceit of Chinatown is that a diabolical mogul, Noah Cross, essentially invented a water shortage so that the city of Los Angeles could build an aqueduct. Cross then ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Nuclear Option
According to an NYT report, President Obama has offered loan guarantees for two new reactors. If the project goes forward, it would be the first nuclear reactor built in the United States since the 1970s. In a speech in Lanham, Md., Mr. Obama announced government approval of an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to help the Southern Company build two reactors in Burke County, Ga., near Augusta. The proposal is to use an advanced passive design. "Passive" means that if the ...
CONTINUE READINGAnswering the Climategaters
Want to create a scandal? Just add "gate" to the end of any noun. Climategate is a good example. Real Climate ha an excellent post dissecting the charges of error in the IPCC report, which turn out to be quite insignificant (and some of them not even errors at all.) Of course, if you come three large dense volumes carefully enough, you can find some glitches. For example, here's the scoop on one of the few actual errors, on Himalayan glaciers: Himalayan glaci...
CONTINUE READINGA Website Named DSIRE
Those who are interested in Clean Tech, particularly from the investment point of view, will want to take a look at the DSIRE site. Sorry, it doesn't actually have anything to do with the Tennessee Williams play, I jsut couldn't resist the play on words. DSIRE stands for Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency. It's a comprehensive, state-by-state survey of incentives. So if you'd like to know about the twenty or so incentive programs in (say) R...
CONTINUE READINGPesticides, Science and Politics
Those three can make for a toxic environment, literally and figuratively. Take the case of methyl iodide, a material so obviously toxic that scientists use it to induce cancer in laboratory experiments. Arysta LifeScience Corporation has obtained a federal pesticide registration from EPA for use as a fumigant, despite a letter from 50 scientists, including five Nobel laureates, characterizing it as "one of the more toxic chemicals used in manufacturing." In the fa...
CONTINUE READINGSimple Answers to Simple Questions
After noting some positive poll results regarding climate change, Cara asks: So, can we get cracking on a clean energy and jobs bill in the Senate? No. This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions....
CONTINUE READINGFrom Songs to Film
So the obvious next step -- in follow-up to the debate about the top ten environmental songs -- is to debate film. Sean, Cara and I had an e-mail exchange about the topic and decided that environmental films could be divided, roughly, into three or four categories. First are the toxic torts/nuclear horror films. Silkwood, The China Syndrome, Erin Brokovich and A Civil Action come to mind. Then there are the envirornmental apocalypse films: Avatar, of...
CONTINUE READINGNot-horrible climate polling news
Yes, it's been a bad few months for climate science, as Ann wrote. And it also hasn't been great for Congressional climate politics. But, finding hope where I can, I'll seize on some good (or -- at least not terrible) polling news about US support for climate action. Last week, the Yale Project on Climate Change released its latest poll results assessing Americans' attitudes on climate change issues -- this one focusing on support for domestic climate and energy pol...
CONTINUE READINGOur Carbon-Based Trade Deficit
A lot of people are worried about the trade deficit. As it turns out, more than half of the deficit is due to petroleum imports, as Matthew Yglesias points out. This graph tells the story: ...
CONTINUE READINGNew environmental dating site matches fossil fuel industry lobbyists, elected officials
I've never been involved in either of two trends that have exploded in recent years: internet dating, and lobbying of federal officials by fossil fuel-based energy-producing companies. But I just learned about a new website that links the two. The site, Polluter Harmony, says it "is the #1 matchmaking site for polluters, industry lobbyists, & politicians." Although I'm married, I couldn't resist checking it out just out of curiosity. "Success story" testimon...
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