Grist | Topics | 107 Results

RESULTS		Results 76 – 100 of 107
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Eliminating fossil fuels is friggin' cheap A third of our military budget could cure our carbon addiction	Gar Lipow	16 Feb 2008	Gristmill
Scientific American's grand plan to provide a bit over a third of U.S. energy from solar sources provides insight into what it would cost to phase out all or most U.S. greenhouse emissions. Bottom line: a lot less than current military spending. The total cost of the SciAm plan: $420 billion over the course of that 40 years, or slightly over ten billion dollars per year -- less than current fossil fuel subsidies, less than the new subsidies 'clean coal' would require ...
Topics: energy, fossil fuels (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)

Green energy is the bottomless well The poverty of fossil fuels becomes apparent	John McGrath	27 Dec 2007	Gristmill
Martin Wolf makes what I think is a really bad argument in the Financial Times:We live in a positive-sum world economy and have done so for about two centuries. This, I believe, is why democracy has become a political norm, empires have largely vanished, legal slavery and serfdom have disappeared and measures of well-being have risen almost everywhere. What then do I mean by a positive-sum economy? It is one in which everybody can become better off. It is one in ...
Topics: energy, fossil fuels, renewable energy (all these topics)

Proof that 'beyond petroleum' was greenwashing BP joins 'biggest global warming crime ever seen'	Joseph Romm	19 Dec 2007	Gristmill
The tar sands are rightly called one of the world's greatest environmental crimes, as I've written. No company that invests in the Canadian tar sands can legitimately call itself green. Yet BP, the oil company that lavished millions on advertising its move 'Beyond Petroleum,' announced this month it's putting $3 billion into this dirtiest of dirty fuels! BP is buying a half-share of the ironically named Sunrise field: 'BP's move into oil sands is an opportunit ...
Topics: business, energy, fossil fuels, greenwashing, oil, oil sands (all these topics)

Keep it in the ground Efficiency without renewable energy is not sufficient	Jon Rynn	18 Dec 2007	Gristmill
Recently George Monbiot argued that humanity must figure out a way to leave the fossil fuels in the ground: Most of the governments of the rich world now exhort their citizens to use less carbon. They encourage us to change our lightbulbs, insulate our lofts, turn our televisions off at the wall. In other words, they have a demand-side policy for tackling climate change. But as far as I can determine, not one of them has a supply-side policy. None seeks to reduce the sup ...
Topics: energy, fossil fuels, 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)

How will we feed ourselves? What a fossil-fuel free agriculture might look like	Jon Rynn	06 Dec 2007	Gristmill
At some point in the future, humanity will have to produce its food without the help of fossil fuels and without destroying the soil. In a well-researched and succinct new essay, 'What will we eat as the oil runs out?', Richard Heinberg analyzes the main problems with the global agricultural system, and proposes a solution: a global organic food system. Heinberg lays out four major dilemmas of the current system: The direct impacts on agriculture of higher oil pric ...
Topics: agriculture, energy, food, fossil fuels, local food, organic food (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)

You know what they say about a guy with a big footprint? GAO says the electric sector's got a big subsidy to match	Sean Casten	28 Nov 2007	Gristmill
The GAO has reported on subsidies to our electric sector, proving what Grist readers already (sadly) know, namely that subsidies to the dirty folks vastly exceed existing or proposed subsidies to cleaner generation. The most remarkable thing is that the biggest subsidies, like nuclear liability guarantees and lower debt costs through rate payer guarantees, aren't even included in the list (although, to the GAO's credit, it does acknowledge their existence). So ...
Topics: coal, economy, energy, fossil fuels, nuclear power, renewable energy (all these topics)

OPEC issues bizarre oil threat, Financial Times also confused OPEC nations demand that petroleum-consuming countries maintain current thirst for oil	Joseph Romm	13 Nov 2007	Gristmill
NPR's Marketplace called me today for comments on this bizarre Financial Times article: 'Opec to seek assurances on oil demand.' Apparently these absurdly rich countries -- with projected revenues of $658 billion this year -- who are selling their product at nearly $100 a barrel, are threatening not to invest in new production unless the consuming countries promise to maintain demand. Seriously! No, seriously: Opec will this week seek assurances f ...
Topics: energy, fossil fuels, international politics, oil, politics (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)

Notable quotable	David Roberts	10 Oct 2007	Gristmill
"People use fossil fuels because the good Lord put them on earth for us to use." -- Fred Palmer, senior VP of PR for coal giant Peabody Energy
Topics: fossil fuels, energy, quotables (all these topics)

Responsible development of fossil fuels? The energy department's strategic unconventional fuels fantasy	Joseph Romm	04 Oct 2007	Gristmill
The DOE's Strategic Unconventional Fuels Task Force has issued its surreal final report: Responsible development of America's oil shale, tar sands, heavy oil, coal, and oil resources amenable to recovery by carbon dioxide injection, by private industry, supported and encouraged by government actions to reduce uncertainties and stimulate investment, could supply all of the Department of Defense's domestic fuels demand by 2016, and supply upwards of 7 million barrel ...
Topics: politics, oil, fossil fuels, energy (all these topics)

Transportation is a big honking deal Responsible climate policy means reducing transportation emissions	Eric de Place	23 Aug 2007	Gristmill
In the Northwest, it's impossible to address climate change without doing something about transportation. Take a look at this chart showing CO2 emissions from fossil fuels in Washington. In Washington (as in Oregon), everything else pales in comparison to the emissions that come from transportation. In fairness, the chart above shows only emission from fossil fuels. But fossil fuels represent better than four-fifths of the state's entire portfolio of green ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, fossil fuels, greenhouse-gas emissions, Washington (all these topics)

Hansen on 'fossil fuel subsidies' They should be gradually eliminated	Joseph Romm	31 Jul 2007	Gristmill
Even more from NASA's climate guru: Given the damage that fossil fuels cause to the climate, human health, wildlife, forests, lakes, ocean fish, etc., you may think that we place a very high tax on fossil fuels, right? Umm, well, not exactly. On the contrary, our government, egged on by special interests, chooses to subsidize them, or, more accurately, they volunteer you to subsidize fossil fuels. ... Being from Iowa, I point out an example on the ...
Topics: fossil fuels, energy (all these topics)

Adventures in the smart grid no. 2: Demand response Information is power	Patrick Mazza	27 Jul 2007	Gristmill
The day is sweltering, air conditioners are cranked up, and the power grid is straining to meet demand. Today is a 'needle peak' day -- on the annual power demand chart, it shows up as a spike. Out of the year's 8,760 hours, needle peaks will occupy 200 hours or less. An extreme day like this is why the grid maintains roughly twice as much power generating and transmission capacity as it uses on an average day. Even though power plants and lines are idle most of the ye ...
Topics: electricity grid, energy, energy at home, energy efficiency, fossil fuels, renewable energy, wind power (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)

Soil is blowing in the wind Global warming, agriculture, and fossil fuels	Jon Rynn	06 Jun 2007	Gristmill
In the article 'A Perennial Search for Perfect Wheat' in yesterday's New York Times science section, writer Jim Robbins highlights one of the slow-moving global disasters of our age: the destruction of the world's soils. This in turn is part of a wider problem: global ecosystem destruction, including depleted oceans, cleared forests, and overgrazed grasslands. As for erosion, Robbins writes:Erosion is the big problem. Scientists say that an average of 12 tons of soil are ...
Topics: agriculture, fossil fuels, industrial ag (all these topics)

Alas, it's still true about what's too good to be true Crap, another means of continuing business as usual failing to survive scrutiny	JMG	15 May 2007	Gristmill
Important, albeit somewhat depressing, post about biofuels from algae on chemical engineer Robert Rapier's always excellent blog. Here's his introduction to the article, which you should read in its entirety:The following is a guest post by John Benemann. John has many years of expertise in biomass conversion, and previously co-wrote a guest piece on cellulosic ethanol. On the subject of biodiesel from algae, he literally wrote the book. I originally wrote an article over ...
Topics: biofuels, energy, fossil fuels, renewable energy (all these topics)

Your tax dollars at work Coal is the enemy of the human race. Coal is the enemy of the human race	Adam Browning	03 May 2007	Gristmill
The Office of Fossil Energy (no, not Dick Cheney's office -- apparently there is another one) released a new report this week: 'Tracking New Coal Fired Power Plants.' An excerpt from the press release: If built, the plants will be critical in helping to meet future electricity demand in the United States. The new and proposed plants would theoretically produce enough electricity to power 90 million homes. Coal is vital to the nation's energy security. Providi ...
Topics: coal, energy, fossil fuels, national security (all these topics)

Get ready for the summer driving season Build your stockpile of gas now!	Payton Chung	27 Apr 2007	Gristmill
Gasoline supplies right now are plumbing historic lows, just as May and the "summer driving season" are about to roll around. This fact has the industry types at the WSJ's Energy Roundup abuzz with predictions of $4/gallon gasoline, should the inevitable disruption (refinery fire, hurricane, Iran war) occur. As in years past, areas with higher cost gasoline, mostly the blue states along the oceans and Great Lakes, will see the highest prices.Some hope that rec ...
Topics: cars, energy, fossil fuels, green living (all these topics)

Feeding the Beast It's time for a real 'food vs. fuel' debate	Tom Philpott	13 Dec 2006	Victual Reality
It's time for a real "food vs. fuel" debate By Tom Philpott 13 Dec 2006 Grain piled high at an ethanol plant will feed only insatiable driving habits. Photo: iStockphoto Can U.S. farmers keep filling the nation's bellies as they scramble to fuel its cars? Given its evident gravity, the question has drawn remarkably little debate. Like it or not, though, more and more food is being devoted to fueling the nation's 211-million-strong auto fleet. High gasoline prices, ...
Topics: agriculture, biofuels, economy, energy, ethanol, food, fossil fuels, greenhouse-gas emissions, industrial ag, Victual Reality (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)

Heat and Serve Can industrial agriculture withstand climate change?	Tom Philpott	04 Oct 2006	Victual Reality
If the fossil fuels don't getcha, the genetics will. Photo: iStockphoto In the United States, the clearest signs of climate change so far have been stern words from Al Gore and a few hotter-than-normal summers. In Greenland, by contrast, global warming has sparked a revolution -- at least, when it comes to agriculture. A recent article in the German magazine Der Spiegel explores the dramatic new op ...
Topics: agriculture, climate, climate change adaptation, climate change impacts, fossil fuels, industrial ag, Victual Reality (all these topics)

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