Climate Climate & Energy

Downward Freezing Dog

Freezing AC is status symbol at some Asian offices In some tropical Asian cities, it’s become a symbol of luxury to keep offices at an arctic chill. Hong Kong may be the world’s coldest city when you’re indoors, say researchers, who found the average office temperature is between 70 and 72 degrees Fahrenheit (72 to […]

Jack Frost Nippon at Your Nose

Japan will encourage office workers to bundle up for the winter Japan’s summer “Cool Biz” campaign, which encourages office workers to shed their coats and ties and wear lighter clothing so less energy need be spent on air conditioning, has proven such a success that now the nation’s Environment Ministry is plotting to follow it […]

The Nyet Set

Russian skeptics bet British scientist $10K that earth will cool Guess this counts as putting your money where your mouth is: Two Russian climate-change skeptics have bet a U.K. climate scientist $10,000 that the earth will cool over the next decade. Solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev believe that changes in sunspot activity are […]

Replacing fossil fuels with biodiesel may do more harm than good

I remember when real environmentalists drove smoking VW vans with bumper stickers that said stuff like, "You can't call yourself an environmentalist if you eat meat." They didn't get the best gas mileage, but hey, you could do worse. They were replaced by the forest-green Subaru Outback (Eddy Bower edition if you were really cool), seen by the dozens in any REI parking lot. These are presently being eclipsed by the ubiquitous Prius. But, there is stiff competition from the diesel Jetta replete with biodiesel stickers all over the butt end.

As we all know by now, biodiesel can be made out of a lot of things:

Soybeans: 50 gallons per acre
Rapeseed: 150 gallons per acre
Jatropha: 175 gallons per acre
Palm oil: 650 gallons per acre

To limit the impact on the planet, maybe we should start pressuring our biodiesel distributors to sell fuel made only from palm oil? According to the World Wildlife Fund, we would also need to demand that it be made out of palm oil grown only on degraded, non-forested land:

Dispatches from a student-run clean-car campaign

The Road to Detroit campaign is run by 11 student organizers from around the U.S., one big, beautiful biodiesel and veggie-oil bus, and many friends and allies. Road to Detroit is a campaign of Energy Action, a student and youth clean-energy and global-warming coalition. Friday, 19 Aug 2005 DETROIT, Mich. We know you know about […]

Miser Permanente

Americans get creative at saving gas as price per gallon soars Ever since dinosaurs walked the earth, died, and decayed under high subterranean pressures to become the fossil fuels we so depend upon today, Americans have carried on a brontosauric love affair with gasoline. But with prices climbing toward $3 a gallon, that may change. […]

Doubter Darkness

Another climate-skeptic argument bites the dust Another argument treasured by climate-change skeptics may be headed the way of the dinosaurs. For years, doubters have made much of the fact that the troposphere (the lower part of the earth’s atmosphere) didn’t seem to be warming as fast as the earth’s surface, as climate models had predicted […]

The Peat Is Gone

Siberia’s fast thaw alarms scientists Siberia is melting. Meeelllting! Ahem. Of particular concern is a 386,000 square-mile expanse of western Siberian permafrost that’s been icy cold for about 11,000 years and sits atop billions of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If the permafrost melts, the methane could […]

The Migrate Outdoors

As the world gets hotter, migratory animals move north Reports are piling up of odd animal sightings in northern regions: salmon swimming through the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia; birds like the Cape May warbler moving from U.S. spruce forests to cooler Canadian climes; a fish usually found off the coasts of Africa or […]

Could TV and film be the key to the renewable energy revolution?

On several occasions I have written about television shows and movies. In doing so, I've tried (albeit unsuccessfully) to start a discussion about the impact they have on audiences when they address environmental issues and/or feature eco-friendly products (hybrids, windmills, etc).

Recently, I issued a call asking (and paraphrasing Bill McKibben): "Where are the movies? The TV shows? The comics? The bleeping video games?"

I believe exposure to such content will help introduce enviro concepts to consumers of pop culture, create awareness (you mean windmills aren't only a Dutch thing?), educate (hey, I didn't realize you could fit two dead bodies in the back of a Toyota Prius!), and start a conversation (do you think Julia Roberts drinks organic soy milk in real life?).

That said, I direct you to a recent piece (based on a true story) by our friend Joel Makower. Our story begins:

(Fade in: two small children running around in a playground. Pan right: A hybrid car slowly drives by while the blades of huge windmills rotate in the background. Narrator's voice begins ... )

If you could pay an extra five or ten bucks a month to help reduce global warming, childhood asthma, rolling brownouts, the national debt, and the threats of Al-Qaeda, would you bother? I'm guessing you'd think that a no-brainer.

So, why aren't you buying clean energy?

The question has been befuddling everyone from environmental activists to utility executives. Nearly every American, it seems, understands that generating electricity from the sun, the wind, the earth's heat, or gases generated by rotting waste is good news for everyone -- the planet, people's health, national security, and the economy.

So, what's the problem? They just don't think clean energy works.