Even before the earthquake a year ago that killed at least 220,000 people, Haiti was an ecological nightmare. Large-scale deforestation has left less than 2% of the original forest cover standing—a fact that is starkly apparent when flying between Haiti and its neighboring country the Dominican Republic, which has conserved far …
Oil Spill: After the Commission Report, Letting the Drillers Have Their Say
It won’t surprise readers of this blog that I agree with the BP Oil Spill Commission that there are serious safety problems with offshore drilling that need to be tackled to prevent another Deepwater Horizon. But the oil industry doesn’t quite see it that way. From the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) response to the commission’s …
Spill Report: Will the BP Disaster Reduce the Risk of Deepwater Drilling?
My time.com piece on the Gulf oil spill report—and the impact it will have on the deepwater drilling industry—is up on the main page. Check it out here.
Oil Spill: Presidential Commission Recommends Safety-First Approach to Drilling
The National Commission of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling released its final report this morning. (I know—you were watching the Verizon iPhone launch.) We’ll have a story up soon on the mainpage about the report and the impact it may have on the offshore drilling industry—I’m guessing not that much—I …
Australia Floods: From Bad to Worse
It’s another miserable day for flood-stricken Queensland, with parts of Brisbane being evacuated after the city’s river burst its banks on Tuesday afternoon. Local reports say the Brisbane roads that haven’t been closed due to flooding are choked with fleeing residents.
Yesterday, flash floods roared through a valley nearby, crashing …
Climate: Unstoppable Global Warming
One of the biggest obstacles to reducing carbon emissions is the simple fact that political time and climatological time are very, very different. Politicians in elected democracies think on two- or four-year cycles—if that—while even the leaders of an autocratic state like China, without the pressures of an election, are still …
Oil Spill: How the Gulf Cleaned Itself—The Bacterial Way
Over on the TIME.com mainpage, I have a piece about the growing number of scientific studies that have examined the Gulf of Mexico since oil spill, and found a surprising fact. Most of the oil and other hydrocarbons released by the blown Macondo well seem to have vanished, broken down and digested by bacteria. It’s a sign that the Gulf, …
Climate: Student Reporters Take on Climate Change and Security
Coincidences abound—just after posting an item on Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s focus on climate change and renewable energy as a national security issues, I run across a new multimedia project from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism that explores: climate change and national security. Called “Global Warning,” the website …
Politics: Gabrielle Giffords Is a Green Patriot
A lot of attention has focused on how Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s support for health care reform might have helped made her a target. (On Monday Giffords was still in a medically induced coma after being shot in the head Saturday morning in Tucson.) Her office in Tucson was vandalized last March after she voted in …
Transportation: Ford Introduces A Line of Electric Cars—With a Twist
After decades of waiting and wishing, 2011 really is shaping up to be the year of the electric car. GM’s Volt—an electric car with a gas-powered “range extender”—and Nissan’s all-electric Leaf will soon be appearing in Americans’ garages. (Ads for the cars—Nissan has the one with the polar bear—are already almost impossible …