If, like me, you’ve contracted an unbreakable addiction to Apple products, then this really is the most wonderful time of the year. As always, Steve Jobs has timed the release of some new products for the holiday season, including the ultra-light MacBook Air which—full disclosure—I’m typing this blog post on right now. Add that to …
A Happier Year in Store for America’s Sharks?
Sharks caught a break yesterday after the Senate passed a piece of important legislation aimed at reducing the number of sharks finned in U.S. waters. The Shark Conservation Act of 2009 passed the Senate on Monday, strengthening existing legislation by closing a few gaping loopholes in the law, and is now due to move to the House.
The …
New Mistletoe Species Discovered: Yet Another Excuse to Celebrate This Holiday Season
Among the various natural disasters and man-made catastrophes that unfolded during 2010, it’s nice to take a moment to consider the happier crumbs of environmental news that came out of the year. The UN’s International Year of Biodiversity yielded the discovery and naming of hundreds of new species, many of which can be credited to the …
Climate: California Approves Carbon Cap-and-Trade
OK, so a national carbon cap-and-trade program is, as we’ve said many times before, extremely dead. And at this point, no one has any idea what form energy and climate legislation might take over the next couple of years, or whether anything’s really possible. Climate change hasn’t gone away, even if many people are pretending that …
Greenpeace’s New Board Game
Looking for the perfect gift for your radical, left-wing activist nephew? Greenpeace has just the product for you: a free downloadable board game called “Deepsea Desperation” that pits oil industry versus Greenpeace for control over deapsea oil reserves.
According to the Greenpeace website, the game is for two players, or teams of …
Energy: Research Vs. Deployment
It’s become fashionable among energy and climate thinkers to call for greatly boosted government investment in energy research, to face up to what Energy Secretary Steven Chu has called America’s “Sputnik moment.” Certainly that was the overriding message from yesterday’s Energy Innovation 2010 conference in Washington that I …
Energy: The Future Will Be a Gas
That was one message from yesterday’s Energy Innovation 2010 summit at the National Press Club in Washington, put on by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and the Breakthrough Institute. And it came from a high-level source: Nobel Prize-winning physicist Burton Richter. Richter—who helped put together a group of 34 …
Oil Spill: The Federal Government Takes BP to Court
I’m finishing up the Energy Innovations 2010 conference in Washington, of which more later today, but I wanted to note the news that the U.S. Justice Department has decided to sue BP and a number of other companies over this summer’s oil spill in the Gulf. From Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement today:
We intend to prove that
…
Energy: A Prize in the Desert Aims to Become the Cleantech Nobel
I’m traveling today to the Energy Innovation 2010 conference in Washington, where I’ll be moderating a panel tomorrow on innovation policy, so I apologize for the light posting today. I’ll have more on the conference tomorrow, which brings together thinkers and journalists who are looking for a new way to crack the energy and climate …
What If Yemen Is the First Country to Run Out of Water?
Experts cited by CNN say Yemen could be the first nation to completely run out of water in a few years, a prospect that does not bode well for its young population of 24 million that is expected to double in 20 years, or anyone worried about the rising influence (and ability to get bombs on planes) of an al Qaeda branch in one of the …