politics

Will Afghanistan become an electric-car superpower?

By Bryan Walsh June 14, 2010

Lithium—it’s not just my second-favorite song in the Nirvana catalog. The soft and silvery metal is the key ingredient in making the long-lived lithium-ion batteries needed to build workable electric cars. All the big electrics—the Tesla Roadster, the Nissan Leaf, the Chevrolet (yes, not Chevy) Volt—use lithium-ion batteries, as …

EcocentricOil

BP Mendacity Watch: #1

By Bryan Walsh June 14, 2010

From the beginning of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, there have been questions over just how much crude really is bleeding out of BP’s well. The first figure—supplied by the company—was 1,000 barrels a day. The government later upped that to 5,000 barrels, a number that stood despite the skepticism of a raft of outside experts. …