EcocentricEcocentric
Right now the Energy and Power Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is holding hearings into climate science. You can watch them here, if you’re really masochistic, or you can follow expert live blogging from Science magazine’s Eli Kintisch and others over here. I’m at a hydraulic fracturing expert panel for the …
EcocentricHealth
Cross posted from TIME’s Healthland
Plastics. They seem so…inert. Slow to erode or decay, with a biodegradation time measured in the hundreds of years, plastics appear cut off from the organic environment in the way that no other product is, safe and secure and sterile. Yet scientists have begun to learn that plastics are …
EcocentricBiofuels
Another day and there’s another study that undermines the case for biofuels as an eco-friendly source of energy. This time it’s the booming palm oil plantations of Southeast Asia, which yield the raw ingredients for biodiesel, used most often in Europe. Activists have been warning for some time that the growth of palm oil is leading …
EcocentricRegulation
As the National People’s Congress kicks off in Beijing, Chinese leaders’ priorities for the nation were rolled out over the weekend in the 11th five-year plan (2011-2015). Among those priorities, which include pledges to improve pollution, increase clean energy production and reduce the nation’s yawning wealth gap, is tackling …
EcocentricPolitics
I’m always cautious about overpraising China. That reluctance is partially due to the experience of having lived in Hong Kong for five years in the last decade. I saw up close the amazing and inspiring story of that country’s economic growth, which has led to hundreds of millions rising out of poverty. I also saw the negatives: air …
EcocentricPolitics
This afternoon, environmental activist Tim DeChristopher was convicted of violating the federal onshore oil and gas leasing reform act and making a false statement when he bid on a federal oil and gas lease in 2008. You can read about it in this piece from TIME’s Jeanette Moses, who was in Salt Lake City covering the trial.
You can …
EcocentricUncategorized
On Feb. 25, I posted a blog arguing that nuclear weapons are the most important and urgent environmental threat today—even more important than climate change caused by greenhouse gasses. I received quite a bit of feedback from environmentalists—many of whom took umbrage with my thesis.
EcocentricWildlife
It’s no secret that wildlife around the world is under severe stress. The most recent Red List from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimated that 33% of the species evaluated by the group are at least threatened. The causes are many—hunting, disease, habitat loss, invasive species, even climate change—but …
EcocentricEnergy
Last week environmental activists in Brazil – and Hollywood – were celebrating a victory over what is slated to become the world’s third largest hydroelectric plant. A Brazilian court in Para state ruled last Friday that the state-backed project, key to President’s Dilma Rousseff’s infrastructure push to support Brazil’s …
EcocentricHealth
Over on Healthland, I have a gallery looking at the various ways that unchecked warming might harm human health. It’s pegged to a recent push by the major health organizations in the U.S. to draw attention to climate change. If environmentalism doesn’t work as a motivating force, maybe health will. Check it out here.
