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Fishermen in Lake Clumet, Illinois—just six miles downstream from Lake Michigan—netted a fish on Tuesday. That generally being what fishermen do, the news wouldn’t have caused much of a stir, but this was no ordinary fish. They caught a 20 lb. bighead carp, one of a number of Asian carp species that were imported into [...]
The National Enquirer—the once-scorned supermarket tabloid that scooped the mainstream press on John Edwards’ extramarital affair—broke a story yesterday about a masseuse in Portland Oregon, who claimed that Al Gore tried to force her to have sex with him and subjected her to “unwanted sexual touching.” Detectives at the time passed on the case due [...]
Billy Nungesser is mad. This by itself is not unusual—as the president of Plaquemines parish in southeastern Louisiana, Nungesser has been dealing with the oil spill since day one, and since maybe day two he’s been angry with BP and the federal government’s sluggish response to the catastrophe. Nungesser—a constant presence by CNN anchor Anderson [...]
For the past four years, the U.N.’s annual climate talks have been led by a dapper Swiss diplomat named Yvo de Boer. In that time period, the chances of a global climate deal have gone from unthinkable to inevitable and now, seemingly impossible. Through the impossibly long negotiating sessions and the walkouts and the protests [...]
A troubling first sign that Europe’s fiscal crisis will hit the renewable energy sector emerged in Italy this week when the country’s austerity budget halted a practice whereby the government acted as a buyer of last resort for “green certificates” issued to support development of clean energy projects. The Wall Street Journal reported that the [...]
Over the past week or so, as BP has blunted the Gulf spill by channeling more and more of the oil into containers on the surface, it’s been easy to think that the accident could be managed, even if sealing the well has proved impossible so far. But the challenge of working 5,000 feet beneath [...]
When Iceland resumed commercial whaling in 2006, an old whaling station in a deep, beautiful green fjord called Hvalfjordur — or ‘whale fjord’ — was dusted off about an hour’s drive outside the capital of Reykjavik. The company that had lobbied the government to resume commercial whaling was, in fact, the only company that still [...]
Horror at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC) as The Daily Telegraph reports that one of Wimbledon’s greatest traditions—strawberries and cream—is under threat. Apparently, the mass decline in bumblebees and other pollinators will cause “wonky” strawberries—perfectly shaped strawbs are created only when every single ovary has been pollinated by an insect. During [...]
Since the beginning of the oil spill—70 days ago, unbelievably—most of the focus has been on the environmental damage. That makes sense—this is the biggest environmental disaster the U.S. has ever faced, almost certainly, and Louisiana’s oiled brown pelicans and crude-soaked marshes have emerged as the symbols of the spill. Even the secondary storyline—the damage [...]
Over at the Curious Capitalist blog–which I admit has both a better name and logo than Ecocentric—my TIME colleague Stephen Gandel looks at the common assumption that carbon pricing is bad for the economy. We hear rhetoric about carbon pricing being a “job-killing national energy tax” (thanks, House Republican leader John Boehner), but Gandel examines [...]
