Every year I tune into coverage of the Greener Gadgets conference in New York City (sometimes I’ll attend), but I had no idea that there was a competition running alongside the event until I read Treehugger’s piece about it today. Turns out the Consumer Electronics Association has kicked off an online contest to determine the best–and...
We’re not entirely sure, it turns out. For a long time now, climatologists have believed that the contrails–those white vapor trails left by airplanes you see criss-crossing the sky–had a net warming effect.They believed that the amount of heat the makeshift clouds trapped down towards the Earth’s surface was greater than the amount of warming...
Astronauts-in-training are sure to be disappointed by the White House’s budget plans for NASA, but the rest of us terra-bound Earthlings should be relieved. President Obama’s new budget is cutting funding for the Constellation program that was set to return the U.S.A. to the moon by 2020. But, as the Orlando Sentinel reports, “In the meantime,...
For decades now, one very high hurdle has blocked the path to upgrading a home to solar: that huge upfront investment. It’s this front end cost that most solar-salivating greens cite when asked why they aren’t yet capturing and converting the sun’s rays.
But that barrier has vanished for some lucky residents in a handful of Western states....
A biannual ranking of the world’s nations by environmental performance has revealed the United States to be lagging far behind most of the developed world. And while this isn’t exactly breaking news to anyone paying any attention to our nation’s environmental and climate policies for the past couple decades, our rank–61st globally–is...
If you haven’t heard already, the Great Lakes are under assault by a “missile with fins,” an invasive species otherwise known as the Asian Carp. They’re out-breeding and out-competing pretty much every native species in the Mississippi River and biologists fear that they could decimate the Great Lakes ecosystem.
One solution that’s been...
In the dark, tragic aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, most of the electricity in Port-au-Prince was cut. The lack of power continues to compound the devastation there, shutting down basic communication systems like cell phones and walkie talkies, and leaving lighting and water purification systems dependent on diesel generators. By all...
Following up on Andrew's post yesterday, I want to drill down on what impact this decision will have specifically on environmental issues and our hopes for passing a climate and energy bill this year. In short—it means bad things.
In case you missed it, the Supreme Court yesterday decided 5 to 4 to roll back campaign finance laws that limit...
He's getting killed from all sides, but Obama's first-year environmental record is unprecedented.
Perhaps you've heard—Obama's first year has been a big flop. Guantanamo is still open, public health care ain't happening, Don't Ask-Don't Tell still has soldiers closeted, and he's sat and fiddled while the world burns. Well I'm...
Colbert was clearly speaking to us last night. (Morgan already wrote about his interview with Emily Pilloton of Project H.) He took some time early in the show to talk about—as only Colbert can—a recent study published in Science that highlights the human impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining. He interviews Margaret Palmer, one of the...
