Lawyers representing the oil giant BP on one side, and more than 100,000 Gulf Coast residents on the other, were set to show up at the court of U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier on Monday morning. There they would have begun …
How Bad Was Fukushima?
The headlines were extraordinary: “Japan Weighed Evacuating Tokyo in Nuclear Crisis,” the New York Times wrote a few days ago. “Tokyo Evacuation ‘Was Considered’,” said the Sydney Morning Herald. “Japan Urged Calm While It Mulled …
Sea Changes: Ocean Acidification Is Worse Than It’s Been for 300 Million Years
Human beings are doing unprecedented things to the Earth, which is sort of impressive when you realize that the planet has existed for more than 4.5 billion years. But that’s what happens when 7 billion people produce and consume …
Turn It Down: How Human Noise Is Disturbing the Whales
The residents of California’s Santa Monica Bay have some rather noisy neighbors—and they’re not happy about it. That is the conclusion of a new study which shows that blue whales feeding off the coast of California stop …
War on Coal: Why Polluting Plants Are Shutting Down Nationwide
Good news has been hard to come by for environmentalists, especially during an election year with potentially record-breaking gas prices. (Yes that was former President Bill Clinton at the ARPA-E summit on Wednesday telling …
ARPA-E: Real Talk From Bill Gates on Energy
When Bill Gates speaks about energy, we should listen. Not just because he’s still one of the richest people in the world, or because he did as much as anyone else living to design the world we live and work in. Rather, listen to …
How U.S. Soldiers Are Fueling the Endangered Species Trade
You’re a U.S. soldier, abroad on your first deployment in Afghanistan. Like any world traveler, you want to bring a souvenir back home to the family, something they could never get at home. So you visit the local market on base, …
Little People: Will Climate Change Shrink the Species?
If you think there are no new reasons to get freaked out by climate change, try this: there’s at least a theoretical possibility that a warmer and warmer world could lead to tinier and tinier humans. That’s the inevitable …
Why Obama’s ‘All of the Above’ Energy Policy Won’t Ease Pain at the Pump
I have a brilliant idea that will solve the nation’s energy problem. We need to invest in a massive research program—I mean Apollo Project-sized—to invent a silver bullet. Because all I keep hearing is that we’re all waiting …
Falldown: Radioactive Fallout From Fukushima Posed Little Threat to the U.S.
Nearly a year after the Japanese tsunami and subsequent meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, the good news is that the risk from radiation doesn’t seem to be as high as many initially feared. Take the Pacific Ocean, for …