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For a delicacy that can command such a high price—and which has caused so much devastation in the sea—shark-fin soup is practically tasteless. I’ve only eaten it once, during a reporting trip to the industrial Chinese city of Wenzhou more than nine years ago. I was writing about the sex toy king of China—king of [...]
For all the—very necessary—focus on the 21st century problems of climate change and shifting to a cleaner energy economy, we’re still beset by industrial pollution that hasn’t changed a whole lot since the 19th century. Air pollution—from smog to sooty particulates—is still a major health threat to much of the country. How much? According to [...]
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) have come out with the top ten examples of sustainable architecture and green design. COTE has been listing the top green projects for the past 15 years—each of the winners will be honored at the AIA 2011 Convention and Design Exposition in [...]
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has—how to put this—not been a friend of environmental legislation or regulation. The Chamber—which represents more than 3 million U.S. businesses—spent millions to lead the successful fight against carbon cap-and-trade legislation, along with health care reform and most of President Obama’s other legislative goals. It remains an implacable opponent of [...]
OK, so a national carbon cap-and-trade program is, as we’ve said many times before, extremely dead. And at this point, no one has any idea what form energy and climate legislation might take over the next couple of years, or whether anything’s really possible. Climate change hasn’t gone away, even if many people are pretending [...]
Someone speaking the truth—it’s an unusual occurrence at any government event (unless you have a link to Wikileaks) and it’s even rarer at the highly stage-managed U.N. climate talks. But that’s exactly what happened last night in Cancún at an event put on by Avoided Deforestation Partners, an NGO dedicated to promoting REDD, or Reduced [...]
I spent the first couple of days this week at the Governors Global Climate Summit at the University of California in Davis, where outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger presided over his third gathering of regional and local leaders interested in action on global warming. (Full disclosure: I moderated two panels at the summit.) I wrote about [...]
I’m back from vacation (I’m sure I was missed), but I didn’t go home. I’m out in rather lovely Sacramento today and tomorrow, to moderate a couple of panels at the third Governor’s Global Climate Summit. The meeting is outgoing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s annual gathering of governors and other subnational leaders from around [...]
[Update 1:10 PM]: Ryan Cunningham of Glover Park Group wrote to me to note that by the numbers, Democrats who voted against cap-and-trade were three times more likely to lose then those who voted for it. That’s a striking number, though most of the anti-cap Democrats who lost were Blue Dogs representing generally conservative districts—and [...]
Over on the Time.com mainpage, I have a Going Green column about the Prop 23 battle in California. The ballot initiative would all but repeal California’s landmark global warming law, but during an election cycle where fossil-fuel interests have dominated the money game, green forces have a distinct cash advantage in California. Check out the [...]
