Recent examinations of the health and environmental impacts of mountaintop mining – stripping the tops off of mountains to extract coal – has the practice looking pretty guilty. It apparently spikes birth defects, worsens …
EcocentricCoal
EcocentricCoal
EcocentricEcocentric
Bienvenue au Canada: Welcome to Your Friendly Neighborhood Petro-State
I spent a year in Canada as a teenager in 1993 and ’94, living in the metro Toronto neighborhood of Scarborough, which for some reason Canadians think is hilarious. Aside from the unfortunate 1993 World Series — damn you, Joe …
EcocentricSolar Power
Going Green: Why 2012 Will Be a Bad Year for Renewable Energy
My weekly Going Green column is up on the Time.com mainpage, and I take on the worrying state of the U.S. renewable energy industry. It’s not worrying now—2011, like the last few years, has been great for the wind and solar …
“Kyoto for Canada is in the past. As such, we are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw.”
EcocentricWildlife
Blood Money: Tsunami Recovery Funds Go to Japan’s Whaling Industry
Our Krista Mahr has a post over at Global Spin on news that nearly $30 million worth of Japanese post-tsunami aid is going to the country’s controversial whaling industry. Ironically, one of the (few) positive effects of the …
EcocentricNatural Gas
Fracking: Sizing Up the Quakes That Come from Hydraulic Fracturing
We already know that hydraulic fracturing—the process of injecting millions of gallons of water and chemicals deep into the earth to exploit the natural gas trapped inside rock—can likely help cause earthquakes. The British …
EcocentricEcocentric
U.N. Global-Warming Talks: Good for Diplomats, Indifferent for the Climate
There are deals and then there are deals. That’s my takeaway from the U.N. climate negotiations in the South African city of Durban, which finally concluded early Sunday local time — more than a day after the talks had been …
EcocentricForests
Rain Forest for Ransom?
In this week’s international edition of TIME—which is thankfully not behind the paywall—I have a piece on Ecuador’s innovative plan to forswear drilling for oil in the Yasuni National Park in exchange for funding from the …
EcocentricPolitics
Plan B: When Politics Beat Science
President Obama came into office promising to restore scientific integrity to policymaking, but his Administration has allowed politics to trump science several times—including with this week’s move to keep the emergency …
EcocentricNatural Gas
Contaminated? EPA Says Fracking “Likely” Polluted Groundwater
If you report on the environmental issues surrounding hydraulic fracturing and shale natural gas, you’ll hear a certain line from gas industry representatives over and over: there has never been a documented case of groundwater …