The Vine
Underground Coal Fires
Over at Foreign Policy, Joshua Keating writes about a little-known natural disaster—underground coal fires in northern China: READ MORE >>
Exxon Gets Back In The Climate Denier Business
BP is currently the oil company everyone loves to hate, but there was a time, not too long ago, when ExxonMobil attracted a lot more scorn—in part because it was funding so many different climate-change denier groups. (See Chris Mooney's old but excellent Mother Jones piece that followed the money trail.) Then, in 2007, the company announced it would quit donating to anti-science groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the bad press mostly went away. Until now, that is. READ MORE >>
How Regulation Can Be Good For Innovation
Steven Pearlstein has a good column in The Washington Post today about how smart government regulation can actually foster technological innovation. It's a useful counterpoint to conservative claims that a cap on carbon emissions will crush the economy and shunt us back to the Dark Ages: READ MORE >>
Nuclear Power Pros And Cons
Over at Slate, Nina Shen Rastogi has a nice primer on the pros and cons of nuclear energy. The pros are pretty obvious—nuclear is a low-carbon energy source that, unlike wind or solar, can run all the time without the need to worry about storage. But there are downsides, too. Like cost: READ MORE >>
BP Stops Leak, But The Gulf Crisis Isn't Over
This is welcome news if it holds up: "BP says oil has stopped leaking into the Gulf for the first time since April. BP has been slowly dialing down the flow as part of a test on a new cap. Engineers are now monitoring the pressure to see if the busted well holds." Here's hoping it does. READ MORE >>
Why Electric Cars Aren't Catching On--Yet
The Wall Street Journal has a great piece today on some of the obstacles preventing electric cars from catching on in the United States. Most of the looming uncertainties are things we've covered before, like that pesky chicken-or-egg problem of how to build a critical mass of charging stations to make electric cars viable for drivers. READ MORE >>
Eat A Kangaroo, Save The Planet
Here's one idea for reducing methane emissions down in Australia—get people to eat kangaroos instead of cows: READ MORE >>
