I mentioned Bill McKibben’s recent blockbuster article at Rolling Stone in passing the other day. If you didn’t know about the reality of the climate crisis before reading the article, you do now. This article may well have the impact that Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from A Catastrophe had a few years back. If you were only “concerned” or “cautious” – in the parlance of Yale’s ongoing “Six Americas” study – you’re going to be moved into the “alarmed” category. Continue reading
The Keystone XL pipeline is a travesty. Indeed the whole idea of the Alberta tar sands should be, at this late date, anathema. However, never let it be said that the oil companies and their henchpersons, in Canada and the U.S., are able to actually even consider the health of the planet and the natural environment of the regions in which they operate. Continue reading
Believe it or not, there was another momentous federal court decision in late June other than the one on health care. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the EPA’s key “endangerment” finding on greenhouse gases and the regulatory regime that it has pursued is not only not, as the petitioners asserted, based on “improper constructions” of the Clean Air Act and “otherwise arbitrary and capricious,” but rather that the finding and the EPA’s program are entirely in keeping with the law. EPA has been unambiguously correct in its reading of the Clean Air Act and its procedures, according to the court. Continue reading