Wednesday, 26 Oct 2005

Is LEED broken? The U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program is rapidly becoming the dominant system for certifying buildings as eco-friendly. But green-building practitioners Auden Schendler and Randy Udall fear the program is seriously flawed. In a provocative essay that's been stirring up debate in the green-building world, they highlight many of the program's shortcomings. Reporter Ted Smalley Bowen checks in with LEED's leaders and other interested folks to find out how they're responding to the hubbub and what's next for the world's fastest-growing green-building scheme.

Shake, Rattle, and Bankroll

Hillary calls for Big Oil to fund a cleaner energy future

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) says the oil industry should pony up for a multibillion-dollar "Strategic Energy Fund" that would invest in clean-energy technologies and help folks struggling with spiking heating costs. At the Cleantech Venture Forum in D.C. yesterday, Clinton called for Big Oil to pay an "alternative energy development fee" to help "reinvest" its record-breaking profits, but stressed, "It's not about new energy taxes on consumers." (God no, not new taxes!) She said the money would underwrite wind and solar projects, development of new technologies, and a major push for more efficient use of fossil fuels. The idea will likely face a tough reception in the Republican-controlled Congress, where a recently passed House bill hands oil companies financial incentives to build new refineries. If nothing else, Clinton's speech suggested that energy will be a major theme in the 2008 presidential campaign -- not that she's running, mind you (wink wink).


One suspects it happens to every advice columnist: Miss Manners gets more than one letter about which fork to use. Click and Clack get more than one query about when to change the oil. Prudie gets more than one question about philandering spouses. Walter Scott gets multiple inquiries about TomKat. And our own dear Umbra Fisk gets her share of repeats too. Today, she unveils her list of "FAUQs" -- that's Favorite Ask-Umbra Queries, of course -- as a helpful service to you, her beloved readers.

Stickin' to the Mann

"Hockey stick" climate study largely holds up to collegial scrutiny

The dispute over global-warming science has become something of a soap opera in the U.S., and the latest episode portrays a stinging blow to skeptics. Previously, on As the World Burns: In June, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chair of the House Energy Committee, ordered an inquiry into the famous "hockey stick" study by climatologist Michael Mann, which showed global temperatures spiking in the late 20th century. Many people assumed Barton was just trying to bully scientists whose research bolstered the climate-change consensus, but he did take the time to cite work by energy consultant Stephen McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick purporting to debunk the hockey-stick study. Now it's nearly November and Barton's committee, which received Mann's documentation in July, still hasn't bothered to look at it. But McIntyre and McKitrick are taking it on the chin -- two recent peer-reviewed papers found that there were small glitches in Mann's work but that the non-climatologists' critique was way off the mark. Tune in next week, as Barton reveals he's actually McIntyre's long-lost brother, on As the World Burns ...


One of Hurricane Katrina's many lessons is that those who walk, cycle, or ride public transit instead of owning a car get treated like second-class citizens. Getting stranded during a natural disaster is an extreme example, but it's of a piece with public-policy decisions across the country that prioritize the safety and convenience of car owners over that of nondrivers. Joel S. Hirschhorn calls for an end to the discrimination.

Fallen Idles

Electrified truck stops let tired drivers turn off their diesel engines

Long-haul trucking, however much our economy depends on it, is an environmental nightmare. For one thing, there's all the gasoline burned. For another, as a recent episode of The Daily Show revealed, there are the sealed bottles of pee truckers throw out their windows on the fly. As much as we'd like to write about that, in fact it's a third eco-sin -- long periods that diesel trucks spend idling, spewing particulate pollution into the air -- that's increasingly being addressed. In the Northeast, a growing network of electrified truck stops supply heating, cooling, power outlets, and even wireless internet access to big rigs via electrical hookups at under $2 an hour, lower than the cost of idling on diesel fuel. Meanwhile, in California, air-quality officials have ordered big-rig sleeper trucks not to idle their diesel engines during layovers. The new rule, to take effect on 2008 model year trucks, will keep as much as 53 tons a day of smog-forming nitrogen oxide out of the air. Now, about that pee ...