EcocentricUncategorized
I’m in DC for the AAAS annual meeting, and while this gathering of the world’s smartest people (and the journalists who write about them) is big news in the science world, the real action is a few blocks away at the Capitol. There Democrats and Republicans are in a knife fight over the budget—and just as much, who can sound tougher …
EcocentricWildlife
I’m currently blogging to you from the Acela train en route to Washington for the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting, otherwise known as nerdapalooza. (Just outside Philadelphia now, to which I can only say—go Phils!) I’ll have lots to write about today, over the weekend and early next week on the …
EcocentricOil
You may remember, back when the oil was still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico in June, that then BP-CEO Tony Hayward apologized for the oil spill and promised that the company would “make this right.” Actually, you don’t have to remember—they made a TV ad about it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4PGBSptYCI]
Wait, sorry, …
EcocentricEcocentric
Update [2/17/11 5:05 PM]: A few bloggers and scientists have taken issue with the two Nature studies, arguing that they underplay the uncertainties still at work in the climate system. Judith Curry, an atmospheric scientist at Georgia Tech who tends to be a bit more skeptical of mainstream climate research, wrote that she doubted the …
EcocentricWildlife
This afternoon, President Obama took time out of what has already become a bruising budget battle to announce the release of a new report on America’s Great Outdoors Initiative. It’s a program the White House launched last year to preserve parks and open space across the country. (Access the report, which gathered the opinion of more …
EcocentricFood
I wrote about my TEDx Manhattan conference on sustainable food on the mainpage today, but before I moved on to hydrofracking, budget battles and the usual slate of depressing environment stories, I wanted to offer a few more tidbits from an excellent series of talks. And if you want to see the conference for yourself, the webcast for the …
EcocentricFood
Over on the Time.com mainpage, I have my weekly Going Green column, this time on the rise of the food movement. It was inspired by the TEDx Manhattan conference on sustainable food that I attended over the weekend, and specifically by something said by Brian Halweil—a senior fellow at the Worldwatch Institute and the publisher and …
EcocentricPolitics
It’s Budget Day in Washington, when policy wonks break out the calculators that have the “trillions” button and decide whether we’ll have six more weeks of winter, or six decades more of crippling budget deficits. Actually, today is the day President Obama released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2012, which you can explore in …
EcocentricBiofuels
Over on the Time.com mainpage, I have a piece about the connection between biofuels and rising global food prices, which hit a record level in January. The math is pretty simple—with 40% of the country’s corn crop going to ethanol, and palm oil plantations around the world displacing farms for biodiesel production, biofuels do exert an …
EcocentricPolitics
I’ve written more than a few posts recently highlighting Republican opposition to action on climate change and the party’s efforts to dismantle environmental regulations. But while the GOP has been out front targeting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Obama Administration hasn’t escaped blame from environmentalists for …
