|
|
Since the Deepwater Horizon accident on April 20—and the moratorium on new deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico that followed it—both the oil industry and environmentalists have been waiting for the White House to issue new rules on drilling. BP’s Gulf spill showed that there were clear problems with the way offshore drilling was [...]
In the polarized realm of climate and energy politics, energy efficiency has always been the common ground. The concept is so attractive—we clearly waste far too much of our energy, whether that means driving a car with that gets low gas-mileage or living in a poorly insulated house. If you’re worried about climate change and [...]
I’ve spent the last few days flying, coptering and driving around northern Alberta with the director James Cameron, taking a close look at the massive oil sands developments in the Canadian province. (As this 2008 piece from TIME shows, Alberta’s underground oil sands reserves have made Canada a world player on the global energy stage—it’s [...]
The UN climate change negotiations have fallen off the news map since last year’s summit in Copenhagen ended in barely avoided disarray, but that doesn’t mean they’ve gone away. China will be hosting interim talks for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Tianjin starting on Oct. 4. That meeting will be [...]
In Sunday’s New York Times—which I consumed along with a bagel on my iPhone—architecture critic Nicolai Ourousoff has a report from Masdar, the zero-carbon, ultra-sustainable city growing up in the deserts outside of Abu Dhabi. The Masdar project is the result of a government initiative by the sultans who control Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich capital [...]
If anyone would be receptive to the idea that cell phone radiation might play a role in cancer, it would be Dr. Devra Davis. The epidemiologist and toxicologist is an expert in environmental health, and she’s made a career out of the idea that cancer often has more to do with what’s happening to us [...]
After I sit down with Christiana Figueres, the energetic new chief UN diplomat on climate change, she asks me if I made it to last year’s global warming summit in Copenhagen, which was plagued with logistical problems. I tell her I had, and that the first day I’d waited outside in the Danish cold with [...]
Over in the paper and iPad TIME magazine, I have a long story this week on the oceanographer Sylvia Earle and her mission to save the oceans. I’ve written about Sylvia before on Ecocentric, during our trip to Bermuda—no matter what you think about her very ambitious plan to created vast protected areas across much [...]
These days, environmentalism has become synonymous with the fight against climate change. But good green campaigners know that more immediate environmental challenges still exist. That reality hit home yesterday when the United Nations said it will send an emergency team to Nigeria, after 200 children died in an outbreak of lead poisoning related to gold [...]
Ask Shai Agassi how his electric transportation startup Better Place is doing, and the Israeli-American entrepreneur will offer up an endless supply of good stories. The company’s trial in Tokyo—running several electric taxis in the Japanese capital, which can recharge and switch their batteries at a Better Place station—was recently extended for an additional three [...]
