God knows this blog—and just about everyone else with a keyboard and Internet access—has been hammering BP and the government for failing to do enough to respond to the Gulf oil spill. But what if the best thing to do when oil leaks is…nothing? That was the tentative conclusion of several British experts at a briefing in London …
Hope Seems to Dim for Cap and Trade
Other than maybe Jason in Friday the 13th, nothing has supposedly died and come back to life more often than climate legislation and carbon cap-and-trade. A year ago, thanks in part to fierce opposition from business interests led by the Chamber of Commerce, the cap-and-trade bill cosponsored by Henry Waxman and Edward Markey just barely …
Meat and Antibiotics: Getting Our Animals Off Drugs
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—gingerly, gingerly—took a step on Monday towards addressing one of the most fundamental but unknown threats to public health: the overuse of antibiotics in animal food and water. The FDA said in a new policy document that the uses of antibiotics for agriculture should be limited to treated sick …
White House Space Policy: Good News For Greens
NASA junkies continue to howl at the Obama administration’s plans for human space exploration, and with good reason: there’s just no there there. Space partisans won’t be any happier with a 14-pg. policy statement released by the White House yesterday. (You can read a summery here at whitehouse.gov and download a PDF of the report.) But …
Fish ‘n’ Chips—a solution to London’s droughts?
London may be known for its rainy climate, but the city’s annual rainfall is actually around half that of Sydney, and less than Dallas’ or Istanbul’s yearly precipitation. Indeed, the British Environment Agency designates the capital as “seriously water-stressed” and at risk of summer water shortages.
But now Thames …
Optimism and the Oil Spill
I’m not by nature an optimistic person. If there’s a dark side of the moon, or anything else, I’ll usually find it, and my glasses only come half empty. Getting excited—not something you’ll witness me doing very often. Maybe it’s growing up a Philadelphia sports fan (the Eagles alone being enough to pummel the optimism out of any …
A Quick Fix for Climate Change Falls Flat
It’s always about this time of year—when the first air-sucking, clothes-wilting, soul-smothering heat wave hits a big swath of the country—that people who rarely think about climate change start to worry. Never mind that a single sweltering summer can never be traced directly to global warming. Hot weather causes even some of the …
Solving the Oil Spill: A $10 Million Prize
I’m at the TEDxOilSpill event in Washington DC, which has just broken for lunch. (What’s the diet of very smart people—and the journalists who listen to them? Roast beef sandwiches.) The first half of the conference focused first on communicating just what’s happening down in the Gulf—both from people on the ground, including …
Death (of an Agreement) on the Nile
Nine countries that border the Nile failed to reach agreement on Sunday on a deal to share the river for irrigation and hydro power projects—a troubling indication that water rights will become increasingly difficult to manage in the face of climate change.
In May, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya signed a new agreement …
Climate Change and Space Junk
Here’s a consequence of climate change you probably haven’t thought of. Space buffs know that Earth orbit is littered with junk, including defunct satellites, spent rocket boosters, and other random debris–about 11,500 objects bigger than 4 inches across, according to NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office (it’s their graphic you’re …