I’m in DC for the AAAS annual meeting, and while this gathering of the world’s smartest people (and the journalists who write about them) is big news in the science world, the real action is a few blocks away at the Capitol. There Democrats and Republicans are in a knife fight over the budget—and just as much, who can sound tougher …
AAAS: Making the Tough Decisions on Protected Areas
I’m currently blogging to you from the Acela train en route to Washington for the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting, otherwise known as nerdapalooza. (Just outside Philadelphia now, to which I can only say—go Phils!) I’ll have lots to write about today, over the weekend and early next week on the …
BP Doesn’t Want to Pay Full Price for Oil Spill Damages
You may remember, back when the oil was still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico in June, that then BP-CEO Tony Hayward apologized for the oil spill and promised that the company would “make this right.” Actually, you don’t have to remember—they made a TV ad about it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4PGBSptYCI]
Wait, sorry, …
UPDATED: New Studies Show That Climate Change Is the Culprit in Extreme Rain
Update [2/17/11 5:05 PM]: A few bloggers and scientists have taken issue with the two Nature studies, arguing that they underplay the uncertainties still at work in the climate system. Judith Curry, an atmospheric scientist at Georgia Tech who tends to be a bit more skeptical of mainstream climate research, wrote that she doubted the …
UPDATE: Britain Halts Sale of Public Forests
Here at Ecocentric, we’ve been covering the British government’s plans to sell of national forests—and the huge public backlash to the plans. Today, David Cameron backed down, as his Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman announced to MPs in the House of Commons that she was halting public consultation into proposals to sell 650,000 …
The Beginning of an End to Whaling in Japan?
The annual kerfuffle between Japanese whaling ships and the anti-whaling activists who chase them around Antarctic waters every winter is once again getting its seasonal share of ink and airtime. But this year the familiar scenes from the southerly tug-of-war might have a new victor – for now.
For the last several winters, the Sea …
An Urban President Hails America’s Great Outdoors
This afternoon, President Obama took time out of what has already become a bruising budget battle to announce the release of a new report on America’s Great Outdoors Initiative. It’s a program the White House launched last year to preserve parks and open space across the country. (Access the report, which gathered the opinion of more …
States Sue to Stop Storage of Nuclear Waste
Even if you love nuclear power (gee whiz, it’s carbon free!), you have to admit there’s a problem with using the energy that binds atoms as a source to power cities: nuclear waste. Fission produces isotopes that remain radioactive for thousands of years. And no one wants the waste anywhere near them. In December, the U.S. …
Ecuador to Chevron: Pay Up. And Say You’re Sorry.
A judge in Ecuador handed down a landmark ruling against oil giant Chevron this week, ordering the company to pay $8.6 billion and another 10% of that sum in reparations to the Amazon Defense Coalition for oil pollution damages in a remote rainforest on the South American country’s northeast border.
The ruling – one of the largest …
Table Scraps From the Nascent Food Revolution
I wrote about my TEDx Manhattan conference on sustainable food on the mainpage today, but before I moved on to hydrofracking, budget battles and the usual slate of depressing environment stories, I wanted to offer a few more tidbits from an excellent series of talks. And if you want to see the conference for yourself, the webcast for the …