Tag: carbon emissions
The Wildfire Survivors Who Didn’t Want to Be Climate Models
Everyone says Lytton was a beautiful place to live. The small Canadian town sits at the confluence of two rivers and was built on one of the oldest continuously inhabited areas in North America—the Nlaka’pamux people have called it home for more than 10,000 years. About 250 people lived in the Lytton of the recent past, on a few cross streets and several dozen lots—you could take it in all in one breath. One blistering June evening in 2021, a
This Public Utility Has a Path Toward Clean Energy. Environmentalists Hate It.
On November 10 of last year, at a place called Paradise in western Kentucky, the Tennessee Valley Authority blew up the cooling towers of a large coal-fired power plant. The three stout towers, each 435 feet high, buckled at the waist in synchrony, then crumpled like crushed soda cans. Within 10 seconds, they’d collapsed into a billowing cloud of dust.
To anyone who watched the demolition happen, or saw the footage online, the message was clear: TVA, a sprawling,
America Is on the Right Track
Negativity is by now so deeply ingrained in American media culture that it’s become the default frame imposed on reality. In large part, this is because since the dawn of the internet age, the surest way to build an audience is to write stories that make people terrified or furious. This is not rocket science: Evolution designed humans to pay special attention to threats. So, unsurprisingly, the share of American headlines denoting anger increased by 104 percent from 2000 to
The Electricity Industry Quietly Spread Climate Denial for Years
The MIT professor was unequivocal.
“If we had to stop producing CO₂, no coal, oil, or gas could be burned,” Carroll Wilson declared. The world would have to adopt nuclear energy en masse and perhaps even turn to “electric motor vehicles.”
It was June 9, 1971. Wilson, a management professor, wasn’t speaking at an environmental rally or a scientific meeting. He was talking to a room full of engineers and businessmen who had gathered in Cleveland, Ohio, for the electricity
Mother Nature Dissents – The Atlantic
Mother Nature is entering a dissenting opinion on last month’s Supreme Court decision that weakened the federal government’s ability to combat climate change.
With record heat in Texas that is testing the state’s power grid, a California wildfire that has threatened an ancient grove of sequoias considered a foundation stone of the national-park system, and persistent drought across the West that is forcing unprecedented cutbacks in water deliveries from the Colorado River, the summer of 2022 already is shaping up
The Supreme Court’s EPA Ruling Is Going to Be Very, Very Expensive
Today’s major environmental ruling from the Supreme Court, West Virginia v. EPA, is probably most notable for what it did not do.
It did not say that the Environmental Protection Agency is prohibited from regulating heat-trapping carbon pollution from America’s existing power plants.
It also did not strip the EPA of its ability to regulate climate pollution at all.
In short, it did not, as some progressives feared, blast away any possibility of using the federal government’s environmental powers
Is Biden a Man Out of Time?
The White House’s response to last week’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which in 1973 established a constitutional right to abortion, once again has exposed the tension between the conciliatory instincts President Joe Biden developed during his long career in Washington, D.C., and the ferocity of the modern combat between the two major political parties.
An array of frustrated Democrats this week openly complained that Biden and other administration officials had failed, in their initial reactions to
A Hotter, Poorer, and Less Free America
For the past 18 months, Senate Democrats have been trying to find a climate deal acceptable to all 50 of their members. The main obstacles, so far, have been Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the owner of a coal-trading company, who wants any deal to reduce the federal budget deficit, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who refuses to increase tax rates, the easiest way to satisfy Manchin’s deficit-reduction goal. Senators are now back at the negotiating table, trying
Whoever Controls Scotland’s Land Controls Its Climate Future
The wind turbine judders to life with a boom that echoes down its central shaft. It rotates slowly at first, then gathers speed as its blades pick up the direction of the wind. Andy Clements, who looks after the small wind farm on the tiny Scottish Isle of Gigha, steps out of the control hub at the base of the turbine and looks up with satisfaction. A minor problem required a restart, he tells me, but now the turbine is
The One Group of People Americans Actually Trust on Climate Science
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he weatherman’s striped tie is still snug on his neck as he starts an evening bath for his three kids, one of whom bolts naked from the bathroom and does a lap around the kitchen before running back, feet slapping on the hardwood floor. “Okay,” Shel Winkley says, walking into the kitchen where his wife is loading the dishwasher. “I love you,” he tells her, and then he walks outside to his gray Prius, gets in, and drives to