EcocentricWeather
The cyclone that thrashed a still-soggy Queensland yesterday has re-energized an ongoing debate Down Under over what Australia can expect from a warmer planet and what the nation – the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide per capita – should do about it.
Front and center in the fray is Ross Garnaut, the government’s …
EcocentricEnergy
A neat press release popped into my inbox this week announcing the development of a solar power technology capable of generating electricity on see-thru glass.
EcocentricForests
Today kicks off the UN International Year of Forests. (I know, it feels like International Polar Year just ended—probably because it was actually two years.) The event is meant to focus global attention on the plight of the world’s forests, which provide carbon sequestration, climate regulation and are host to an astounding variety …
EcocentricHealth
Cross-posted from Healthland:
When I was researching a piece last year on chemical regulation—and the lack of it in the U.S.—one of the facts I was most surprised to learn was the existence of perchlorate in the bloodstream of many Americans. That’s perchlorate as in “the main ingredient of rocket fuel.” Yes, the stuff that sends …
EcocentricEcocentric
How big is the storm that is threatening much of Australia with 190 mph winds? About this big, according to our friends at NASA:
In a way, though, it’s fortunate that the storm will be hitting a relatively rich, relatively well-off country like Australia, which is on the fortunate side of the disaster gap. Less than 3 years ago …
EcocentricOil
Back in early June, when the oil was just beginning to wash across the marshlands of southern Louisiana, then-BP CEO Tony Hayward made one of his several unfortunate PR moves. He appeared in a TV ad where he announced, with a background of fishermen and seabirds, that BP will “make this right.” At the time it seemed so absurd—the …
EcocentricEnergy
I have a piece on the home page today about the persistent problem of energy poverty in the developing world. We know that the poorest countries of Africa, Asia and South America are held back by diseases like HIV and TB, along with lack of education and infrastructure. But a major part of what keeps the poor poor is simply lack of …
EcocentricEnergy
President Obama laid down a bold challenge to America in his State of the Union speech last week: get to 80% clean energy by 2035. Clean energy is a deliberately vague goal, since it will likely include nuclear, natural gas and (not really existing) clean coal in the mix. But traditional renewable energy like wind and solar will need …
EcocentricPolitics
It’s impossible to say what exactly the next few days will bring in Egypt, both for the protestors and for the government. It seems clear that the days of the administration of President Hosni Murbarak — at least in its present incarnation — are numbered, and tens of thousands of demonstrators on the streets of Egypt’s cities …
EcocentricTechnology
A government-run institute in Malaysia announced this week that it had released 6000 genetically modified mosquitoes into an uninhabited patch of forest in December to combat dengue fever.
The experiment, which is now over, was aimed at controlling the local mosquito population by having altered male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes mate …
