This story in the Guardian, which reports that UK energy companies have been carrying out covert intelligence-gathering operations on environmental activists is sure to make U.S. climate activists paranoid. Of course, corporate espionage, be it employed against competitors or perceived opponents, is nothing new. If I was the head of a major climate advocacy group,…Continue Reading…
Steve LeVine at Foreign Policy discusses a near-term scenario that Big Oil deems all too plausible: Royal Dutch/Shell says that in 2020, energy supplies will be so tight that they will tip the world into a full-blown crisis in which governments will force their populations to reduce driving, use less electricity, and pay an extremely…Continue Reading…
A Republican over at Frum’s site has some advice for the GOP that will undoubtedly be ignored: if Republicans in Congress want to build on their 2010 gains, going on the warpath against environmental protections might be a flawed strategy. Recent polling and focus group work indicates that roughly three-fourths of Americans ““ including 61…Continue Reading…
A climate blogger goes down the yellow brick road: The Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, has resigned, finally relenting to weeks of massive protests. Is he the latest casualty of climate change? I think I see an upside that everyone else is missing. If more oppressed populaces, inspired by the Egyptians (who were inspired by the…Continue Reading…
There’s a cosmically splendiforous spin-off to this Bill O’Reilly story from last week. H/T: Bad Astronomy
Living in a marginal (but stunning) landscape with obvious constraints has its drawbacks when too many people move there and the natural resources become depleted. In the American Southwest, those drawbacks are not really being felt by the hordes who live there now. Yet. But based on my own knowledge of the drought history of…Continue Reading…
In his rise to power as a Republican congressman, Newt Gingrich developed a reputation as a rhetorical “bombthrower.” And that was before Bill Clinton stepped foot in the White House. By the mid-2000s, the former Speaker of the House (he left Congress in 1999), seemed to grow mellower, and even recast himself as a treehugger. …Continue Reading…
With great pithy I tried to caution people not to get so bubbly over the supposed wiki/peak oil revelations. I suppose if I can’t get my three year old to listen to me, why should anyone else? Fortunately, there is somebody much more learned and well-placed than me on the case. Maybe he’ll have better…Continue Reading…
Turn it up. Are you listening!
A few days ago, House Republicans held their first hearing on climate science. Actually, as John Broder reported in the NYT, the ostensible purpose of the hearing was to review the economic impact of pending limits on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. But much of the discussion focused instead on whether climate science supports…Continue Reading…