One of President Obama’s main climate policy thrusts was to persuade the world that since you often get what you pay for, the world should stop paying for more extreme climate disruption by subsidizing fossil fuels. Both the G7 and the G20 accepted Obama’s lead—at least nominally. Some countries did something. Revealingly, both rich and […]
One of the biggest impacts of President Trump’s election is not the direct damage he may do—but the cultural shift he has unleashed among American business leaders. Assaults on decency and health that would have been unthinkable a few months ago are now the expected response by corporate executives pressured by short-term market pressures and […]
After a week in India, despite crowding, intensity and poverty, there is an undeniable lightness from plunging into a country firmly fixed on its future, not its past, moving forward however jerkily and energized. World's Largest Solar Farm Leapfrogs India to Third in Utility-Scale Solar https://t.co/25pE8C8quL @Solar_Builder @RealSolar — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) December 3, 2016 Here’s […]
The utterly avoidable, terrifying and still potentially catastrophic failures of the spillways of North America’s highest dam—California’s 170 foot, earth-filled Oroville—could, with the right national leadership, awaken America to the urgency of investing in our physical safety and future—our infrastructure. Sixty years old, Oroville single handedly provides one-third of the water for all of Southern […]
It’s staggering to recall that one of Donald Trump’s main appeals to many of his voters was a pledge to “drain the swamp” and rid Washington of corruption. In only two weeks he has, instead, begun stocking the swamp with new and poisonous creatures, making it yet more deadly, much as sugar planters did in […]
Last, week, under the cover of a media bliss-out except among Koch funded right-wing channels, the House of Representatives passed a bill which would effectively repeal future standard setting under every important environmental, public health, consumer protection, labor standards, occupational safety and civil rights law on the books. The bill, called the REINS Act, requires […]
Whatever his voters intended, we can abandon the notion that President-elect Donald Trump is a right-wing populist. Right-wing, yes, authoritarian, probably, demagogue certainly. But his cabinet gives the lie to populism as part of his character. Wall Street may have paid Hilary Clinton hundreds of thousands of dollars to make speeches; but it is Trump […]
Today was supposed to be the deadline for thousands of protesters encamped to prevent completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline across Lake Oahe on the Missouri River to evacuate their camp-sites. Instead it has become a moment of celebration, as the Army Corps of Engineers and the Obama Administration have concluded that a new Environmental […]
I couldn’t, post-election, muster a plausibly big enough piece of good news to warrant a Thanksgiving blog—but then this morning one arrived. In an astonishingly short eight years, as a result of tougher emission rules on power plants and a declining use of coal, concentrations of mercury in Atlantic Bluefin tuna, the sushi sort, dropped […]