In 2012 Scientific American asked: Are Wind Turbines Getting More Bird and Bat-Friendly? In case you weren’t aware, wind energy has an ecological downside that’s hasn’t yet been smoothed out. As AP reporter Dina Cappiello wrote earlier this year, “the green industry is allowed to do not so green things”: It kills protected species with impunity and conceals the…Continue Reading…
Several weeks ago, this was the headline for a press release: Mayor Bloomberg announces New York City’s air quality has reached the cleanest levels in more than 50 years. That’s quite a claim. Most media outlets reporting this story cut and pasted from the press release; few bothered to delve into the report Bloomberg was…Continue Reading…
As it becomes increasingly evident that a switch from coal to natural gas is reducing energy-related carbon emissions in the United States–which is a net plus if you care about climate change– opponents of fracking find themselves being asked to choose between the lesser of two evils. That is a debate in of itself worth…Continue Reading…
I was goofing around on Twitter today: I’m pretty sure all da GMOs, flame retardants & WiFi electromagnetic radiation cancel out my wind turbine syndrome. — keith kloor (@keithkloor) April 18, 2013 If you’re unfamiliar with that last reference, I refer you to my recent Slate piece:
I’m often fascinated by what’s left out of environmental stories. Tim McDonnell has written a piece for Mother Jones that is picked up by the Guardian. It’s titled: “Why the U.S. still doesn’t have a single offshore wind turbine.” There is a major omission in this section on wind opponents: Blowback from “stakeholders”: Whale and bird…Continue Reading…
There’s a lot of teeth gnashing in green circles over the Solyndra fallout. Even if it wasn’t an election year, Republicans would be cynically milking the story for all it’s worth, and that spigot shows no sign of going dry anytime soon. Are they being hypocritical? Sure. You bet they are. But let’s at least be honest and…Continue Reading…
Here’s some straight talk on climate politics: A facile explanation would focus on the ‘merchants of doubt’ who have managed to confuse the public about the reality of human-made climate change. The merchants play a role, to be sure, a sordid one, but they are not the main obstacle to solution of human-made climate change. The bigger problem…Continue Reading…
In 2005, after Robert Kennedy Jr. published an op-ed in The New York Times opposing an offshore wind energy project in Nantucket Sound, environmentalists were plenty pissed. Since then, RFKJr has offered numerous arguments against Cape Wind, but none of them has stuck. I thought he had reached a hypocritical apex a few years ago when he…Continue Reading…
There is this assumption in environmental and climate circles that the Republican party represents (in the United States) the biggest obstacle to political progress on climate change. Recent developments certainly support this view. Since 2009, the GOP has become increasingly hostile to climate science. Republican presidential hopefuls are marching to this same Tea Party beat (even those…Continue Reading…
It’s prompting the Pentagon to become less fossil fuel dependent and will likely hasten the scale up of renewable energy technologies. From Elisabeth Rosenthal’s must-read front page story in today’s NYT: Even as Congress has struggled unsuccessfully to pass an energy bill and many states have put renewable energy on hold because of the recession,…Continue Reading…