“I know this isn’t climate science. This is political science.”
EcocentricSolar Power
Solar: U.S. Slaps Tariffs on Chinese Solar Panels, But the Trade War May Be on Hold
The solar industry in the U.S. has been holding its breath over a much-delayed review by the Commerce Department over allegedly unfair trade practices by Chinese solar panel makers. A few solar manufacturers—notably SolarWorld, …
EcocentricOil
The Big Republican Lie on Gas Prices
I’m a pretty even-tempered writer by nature. I like to withhold judgement for as long as possible. Even though I’m an environment writer, that attitude sometimes gets me in trouble with environmentalists who want me to come down …
“It's really important that we help Americans make smart energy choices—and that's exactly what Energy Star is doing.”
EcocentricOil
Oil: Should President Obama Tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
Barack Obama likes to say that as President of the United States, he doesn’t “bluff” when it comes to foreign policy. But when it comes to energy, it looks like Obama might be willing to try the occasional fake out.
EcocentricNatural Gas
Fracked: CNN Looks Into the Legal Gray Zone of Shale Gas Regulation
Oil is all we seem to want to talk about these days—$3.82 a gallon gas will do that—but the shale gas boom is still going on in much of the U.S. Ground zero—as we wrote about last year in TIME—is Pennsylvania, where some landowners have made a lot of money leasing their land for shale gas production. But as Poppy Harlow reports …
EcocentricEcocentric
Climate: A Valuable New Tool Lets You See Where the Sea Will Rise
When Hurricane Irene neared New York at the end of August, the city took the unprecedented step of shutting down the entire transit system—buses, subways and commuter trains in the largest city in America. The danger was that …
EcocentricPopulation
Population Studies: Birthrates Are Declining. For the Earth — and a Lot of People — That’s Not a Bad Thing
I worked in Japan for a year as a journalist for TIME in 2006 and ’07, and here’s what I realized: the Japanese do everything first. Camera phones, Zen Buddhism, little fuel-efficient cars, huge public debt, a stagnant economy, …
EcocentricEcocentric
Raring to Fight: The U.S. Tangles with China over Rare-Earth Exports
President Obama has been talking tough about what he sees as unfair Chinese trade policy since at least this year’s State of the Union speech, when the President boasted that his Administration had brought up trade cases against …