Grist | Topics | 21 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 21 of 21
Headline	Author	Published	Section
Price is nice As energy costs rise, supply chains go local	Adam Stein	07 Aug 2008	Gristmill
Two articles you should read if you're interested in eating local, growing local, building local, buying local, or any of the other ways that geography, economy, and environment intersect: The first is an article from a few weeks ago, detailing the destruction of the domestic catfish industry due to rising prices for oil, corn, soybeans, and other commodities. All meat is getting more expensive, but catfish doesn't have the advantage of being a dietary staple. The ...
Topics: climate, energy, fossil fuels, gas prices, local food (all these topics)

Mechanism Bull U.N. clean-energy program criticized for not funding clean energy		11 Jul 2008	News
Posted at 2:32 PM on 11 Jul 2008 The United Nations Clean Development Mechanism, set up under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, issues carbon credits to industrialized nations that pay for renewable-energy projects in developing countries. Last we checked, coal and natural gas weren't renewable -- but the CDM is currently paying out millions of dollars a year to 13 natural-gas-burning plants in China and India, and in Sept. ...
Topics: carbon offsets, carbon trading, climate, coal, energy, fossil fuels, natural gas, news, renewable energy, United Nations (all these topics)

Polluter appeasement Should we question the patriotism of deniers?	Joseph Romm	04 Jul 2008	Gristmill
Independence Day may be the best day to ask ourselves -- what is the greatest preventable threat to Americans' life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (LLPH). The answer is simple: human-caused global warming. Certainly there are other major threats to LLPH, the gravest of which is probably terrorists using weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapon, in this country. Between Homeland Security and the Pentagon, we spend billions of dollars every m ...
Topics: climate, climate science, energy, fossil fuels, holiday, politics (all these topics)

The Grand Ostrich Party Conservative heads increasingly buried in sand	Ryan Avent	19 Jun 2008	Gristmill
Andrew Sullivan reads this Jim Manzi post (Conservatives are going to win on climate change! By doing nothing!) and says he's on board. He then proceeds to blow my freaking mind: The key will be private and public innovation of non-carbon energy, and possibly carbon capture technology. Frankly, however painful it is for many, the high price of gas is perhaps the best anti-global warming non-policy there is. Now, why is it that the high price of gas is the best an ...
Topics: climate, energy, fossil fuels, gas prices, politics, renewable energy (all these topics)

The truth will set you free Democrats are undermining the strongest message behind climate policy	David Roberts	04 Jun 2008	Gristmill
In this post, I argued that the best, simplest, and most impactful message for advocates of climate legislation is this: Good climate policy will rescue American families from a sinking ship. I meant to add that the Dems not only seem to miss the power of this message, but are by all appearances working to undermine it. What do I mean? Well, core to the message is a simple truth: Fossil energy costs are going up. They're going to keep going up. The reasons are comp ...
Topics: climate, energy, fossil fuels, gas prices, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Jumping ship from the USS Fossil Climate action advocates need a simple, compelling message on costs	David Roberts	03 Jun 2008	Gristmill
As this lamentable New York Times piece demonstrates, advocates for action on climate change have lost the framing battle. If they don't want to lose the war for America's future, they need to step back, coalesce around a simple message, and get it out to voters in a disciplined way. The corporatist wing of the Republican party has a simple, compelling populist message: capping emissions will hurt American families. It will raise the price of energy -- gasoline, he ...
Topics: climate, energy, fossil fuels, greenhouse-gas emissions, legislation, messaging (all these topics)

Our tails get in the way The problems and principles of energy descent	Sharon Astyk	15 May 2008	Gristmill
'How did you get there, Roo?' asked Piglet. 'On Tigger's back! �And Tiggers can't climb downwards, because their tails get in the way, only upwards, and Tigger forgot about that when we started, and he's only just remembered. �So we've got to stay here for ever and ever -- unless we go higher. �What did you say, Tigger? �Oh, Tigger says if we go higher we shan't be able to see Piglet's house so well, so we're going to stop here.' -- A.A. Milne, 'The House At Pooh Corn ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, climate science, energy, fossil fuels (all these topics)

Details matter: The New York Knicks as GHG policy Lieberman Warner criticism, Part 4	Sean Casten	01 May 2008	Gristmill
This is the fourth in a five-part series exploring the details of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. See also part 1, part 2, and part 3. I grew up in New York and was a die-hard Knicks fan. I can still remember the lump in my throat when I was at a Mets game in 1985 and the Diamond Vision announced that the Knicks had won the draft lottery, ensuring that they'd get Patrick Ewing and build a franchise around him. And yeah, they never won a title with him (da ...
Topics: climate, economy, energy, fossil fuels, greenhouse-gas emissions, regulation, sports (all these topics)

Burning ice, ice, baby Methane hydrates: What's the worst -- and best -- that could happen?	Joseph Romm	17 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Methane hydrates (or clathrates), 'burning ice,' are worth understanding because they could affect the climate for better or worse. You can get the basics here on ... ... a solid form of water that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure [that] occur both in deep sedimentary structures, and as outcrops on the ocean floor. The worst that could happen is a climate catastrophe if they were released suddenly, as some people believed hap ...
Topics: climate, climate science, energy, fossil fuels, IPCC, natural gas, oceans (all these topics)

Breaking the Bank World Bank should get out of carbon-offset market, says report		11 Apr 2008	News
Posted at 3:48 PM on 11 Apr 2008 Carbon-offset dealings by the World Bank have been criticized (and not for the first time) in a report released Thursday by the Institute for Policy Studies. In the past two years, the report charges, the bank has loaned $1.5 billion to fossil-fuel companies to make minor greenhouse-gas reductions. It then sells carbon credits for those reductions, says coauthor Daphne Wysham, " ...
Topics: business, carbon offsets, climate, energy, fossil fuels, news, World Bank (all these topics)

The Vulcan Project A high-resolution map of U.S. CO2 emissions	David Roberts	09 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Check out the Vulcan Project out of Purdue University (with funding from NASA and DOE). It's an attempt to quantify and visually represent U.S. CO2 emissions over time: Here's a nifty video introduction: (via Dot Earth)
Topics: climate, climate science, Department of Energy, energy, fossil fuels, greenhouse-gas emissions (all these topics)

Why FutureGen had to die The blind alley of more coal	John McGrath	25 Mar 2008	Gristmill
Thomas Homer-Dixon, whose book I adore, has written an op-ed in The Globe and Mail arguing in favor of large government investments in carbon capture and sequestration technology. His advocacy of CCS has long confused me -- my reading of his book suggested (to me, anyway) that large-scale CCS was precisely the kind of technology we should avoid like the plague. To recap: Homer-Dixon builds on the work of Joseph Tainter, who argues that societies respond to pressures ...
Topics: carbon sequestration, climate, coal, energy, fossil fuels, renewable energy, wind power (all these topics)

Power Up Rise in U.S. power plant emissions outpaced electricity demand in 2007		19 Mar 2008	News
Posted at 12:11 PM on 19 Mar 2008 Carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants rose 2.9 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to data analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project. That's the largest annual increase in nine years and outpaced demand for electricity, according to the report. And the impact will last well beyond a year, warns EIP Director Eric Schaeffer: "Because CO2 has an atmospheric lifetim ...
Topics: climate, energy, fossil fuels, greenhouse-gas emissions, James Hansen, news (all these topics)

Taking charge of energy prices Our chance to escape the tightening fossil-fuel vise	Alan Durning	20 Feb 2008	Gristmill
With or without climate policies, energy prices seem set to rise. The question is, Who will get the money? Auctioned cap-and-trade gives us the opportunity to take charge of price increases and share the benefits widely -- even while we safeguard the climate and stimulate local jobs. Big chances like this don't come along often! To see what a golden opportunity this is, we've got to briefly review recent fossil-fuel price increases. Energy prices have been risin ...
Topics: carbon trading, climate, climate change mitigation, energy, fossil fuels, oil (all these topics)

Dead industries walking Nuclear power and fossil fuels face water crises and other problems	Joseph Romm	06 Feb 2008	Gristmill
This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project. ----- It has not been a good year so far for King Coal, Big Oil, and whatever nickname we give to the nuclear energy industry. Two weeks ago, TIME reported that nuclear plants in the southeastern U.S. may be forced to cut power production or temporarily shut down later this year because the year-long drought has left too little water to cool the ...
Topics: climate, energy, fossil fuels, nuclear power, renewable energy (all these topics)

The high costs of doing nothing, part II True costs of fossil fuels make renewables seem cheap in comparison	Joseph Romm	09 Jan 2008	Gristmill
This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project. ----- In November 2006, California voters rejected Proposition 87, a ballot initiative to raise the oil industry's taxes by $4 billion for research into renewable energy. Four months before the ballot, a survey (PDF) by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 61 percent of likely voters favored the idea, including 51 percent ...
Topics: climate, consumerism, energy, fossil fuels, politics, renewable energy (all these topics)

It is easy being green Michael Gelobter argues that the hair-shirtists need to give it a rest	Guest author	11 Dec 2007	Gristmill
The following is a guest essay from Michael Gelobter, former president of Redefining Progress and current CEO of Cooler. --- Ask 'how can we break our addiction to fossil fuels and stop global warming?' and climate, renewable energy, and peak oil advocates reply in unison: it's going to be hard. They do couch their warnings in beautifully written and, for the most part, evocative essays on the difficulty and loss involved in weaning ourselves from dinosaur fu ...
Topics: climate, energy, fossil fuels (all these topics)

Averting our eyes A guest essay from climate scientist James Hansen	David Roberts	28 Nov 2007	Gristmill
The following is an essay distributed by email to a number of friends and journalists by pioneering climate scientist James Hansen. It is a response to controversy generated by his testimony before Iowa's utility board, in which he likened coal trains to 'boxcars headed to crematoria.'----- Emails received regarding the letter from the National Mining Association CEO and my letter to him (PDF) suggest a need for an apology on my part and a clarification of the bott ...
Topics: climate, climate science, coal, energy, fossil fuels (all these topics)

Industry's plan for us The many ways big money seeks to avoid reducing fossil fuel use	David Roberts	29 Oct 2007	Gristmill
The following is a guest essay from Peter Montague, executive director of the Environmental Research Foundation. ----- It now seems clear that the coal and oil industries are not going to allow the United States to curb global warming by making major investments in renewable sources of energy. These fossil fuel corporations simply have too much at stake to allow it. Simple physics tells us that the way to minimize the human contribution to global warming is to ...
Topics: carbon sequestration, climate change mitigation, climate, renewable energy, fossil fuels, energy, geoengineering (all these topics)

Shocked, shocked to discover that politicians are sometimes dishonest! Even in Canada	John McGrath	21 Jun 2007	Gristmill
So, about a year ago I wrote briefly about Marc Jaccard, a Canadian economist whose book, Sustainable Fossil Fuels, has been exceedingly popular in Canadian policy-making circles. No surprise there -- any book that says we can have our cheesecake and eat it too is going to find a wide audience among politicians averse to making any tough decision, ever. I was, you could say, less than charitable to Jaccard's ideas. But the latest news from Canada's Conservative do-no ...
Topics: Canada, climate, climate change skepticism, energy, fossil fuels, greenhouse-gas emissions (all these topics)

Energy security: worthless on a cinder Alternatives to oil must take climate change into account	David Roberts	11 Dec 2006	Gristmill
Let me engage in a piece of meta-wonkerific self-reference and quote myself: "Energy security" is a lopsided way of framing our energy problem, and left un-balanced, will do more harm than good. I said that in the context of talking about coal -- the enemy of the human race -- but this week brought another piece of evidence from a different quarter. Lots of energy types think the most readily available, cheapest substitutes for conventional (importe ...
Topics: energy, climate, fossil fuels (all these topics)

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