The Flawed Logic of the Cap-and-Trade Debate
Two prominent — and iconoclastic — environmentalists argue that current efforts to tax or cap carbon emissions are doomed to failure and that the answer lies not in making dirty energy expensive but in making clean energy cheap.
Nation’s First Feed-In Policy Fuels Solar Boom in Florida
While the renewable energy sector struggles and green projects stall due to a worldwide recession, Gainesville. Florida is enjoying a solar power boom. At the Washington Monthly, Mariah Blake, explains the city’s first-in-the-nation feed-in policy and how similar policies have been successful in Germany.
China to Impose Fuel Mileage Standard
Concerned with its growing dependence on foreign oil, air pollution and international pressure to limit carbon emissions, China appears poised to go the US one better, calling for corporate averages of 42.2 mpg by 2015.
Climate Change May be Global, but Politics Remains Local
Grist looks at nine swing votes in the US House of Representatives and the parochial concerns upon which passage of the Waxman-Markey climate bill may hinge.
Genetically Modified Monkeys Give Birth to Designer Babies
“The work paves the way for scientists to breed large populations of primates with genetic faults responsible for incurable human conditions, but could also spark an ethical backlash for introducing harmful genes into the primate population.”
Bizarre Anaerobic Ecosystems Discovered In Lake Huron
Archeologists studying shipwrecks in Lake Huron noticed unusually high levels of conductivity, leading scientists to discover underwater sink holes with anaerobic ecosystems and exotic bacteria.
Reactor Shutdown Threatens World Supply of Diagnostic Isotopes
A local power outage shut down Canada’s Chalk River Reactor, leading to a heavy water leak that has closed the plant indefinitely. The reactor supplies more than half of the nuclear isotopes used in medical diagnoses and cancer treatment worldwide.
Damaged Ecosystems Can Recover Rapidly
“A recent study by Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies reports that if humans commit to the restoration effort, most ecosystems can recover from very major disruption within decades to half-centuries.”
U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Drop in 2008
Last summer’s high gasoline prices combined with the worldwide economic downturn resulted in a 2.8 percent decline in carbon-dioxide emissions compared to 2007 — the largest drop in 30 years. Not the kind of sustainable solution we had in mind.
Rollout of Large Solar Array Undampened by Recent Florida Rain
The largest rooftop solar array in the southeastern US, capable of generating 1 megawatt of electricity, was inaugurated in Orlando this month at the Orange County Convention Center.
Climate Change Disproportionately Affects Poor
According to UC Berkeley researchers, the health and economic well-being of minorities and the poor are most at risk from the heat waves, drought, air pollution, intensifying storms and other weather-related effects of global climate change.
Which stories caught your eye this week?
