Best of the Moment
energy-environment
middle-east
Elizabeth Kolbert | New Yorker | 27 July 2010
Industrial fishing is destroying successive species. Cod, halibut, haddock, swordfish, marlin, skate all rare. Bluefin tuna may soon be extinct. Is no regulatory solution possible?
Jeremy Grantham | GMO | July 2010
Six notes on diverse topics from much-respected investment strategist. All good, but "Everything You Need To Know About Gobal Warming In 5 Minutes", is the one to read first (Scribd)
James Boxell & Ed Crooks | FT | 15 July 2010
FT redeems lacklustre coverage of BP spill with this fine account of anger among company insiders at falling share price, PR fiasco. Fails to mention that BP's PR boss is former FT editor
Rick Bass | VQR | 10 July 2010
Engaging mixture of memoir and polemic. Writer recalls working in his twenties for "honourable" independent oil driller, contrasts that ethos with malign, corporate self-interest of BP in Gulf
Joel Achenbach | National Geographic | July 2010
Good primer on problems confronting America's power industry—mainly aging grid infrastructure, fossil-fuel reliance—and a round-up of possible solutions, if and when money can be found
Natalie Angier | NYT | 5 July 2010
Grey squirrels are patient, smart, tough, athletic, sociable, chatty. "At the end of a hard day’s forage, they greet each other with a mutual nuzzling of cheek and lip glands that looks decidedly like a kiss"
Kevin Zelnio | Deep-Sea News | 23 June 2010
A common phrase, but does it actually work? Past experimenters, among them Benjamin Franklin, found little effect. Huge new test in prospect if a Gulf hurricane hits Deepwater Horizon oil spill
George Monbiot | Guardian | 22 June 2010
Institutional investors threaten to sue BP for misrepresenting safety record. But these same people ignored years of warnings from green pressure groups, chose not to hold BP to account
Bradford Plumer | New Republic | 16 June 2010
Lessons for climate change, from Gulf oil spill. We're bad at calculating risk. We're overconfident about technological solutions. Environmental disaster isn't sure to bring policy change
Sean Flynn | GQ | July 2010
BP disaster explained movingly in human terms. Story of explosion re-told through eyes of men working the rig. Starts slowly, builds strongly, well worth reading through to the end
Henry Waxman, Bart Stupak | US Congress | 14 June 2010
House of Representatives Energy Committee chairmen write to BP boss, alleging five counts of negligence. Warn him to "come prepared" when giving testimony this week (PDF)
Nin-Hai Tseng | Fortune | 9 June 2010
Interview with Matthew Simmons, author of "Twilight in the Desert". Spill is big oil's "Challenger". BP a month away from Chapter 11. Obama should turn clean-up over to US military
Tim Dickinson | Rolling Stone | 8 June 2010
Huge, meticulously reported feature on Deepwater Horizon leak, pinning blame on Obama for green-lighting BP, while failing to reform regulatory agencies
Mike Berners-Lee I BBC Magazine I 8 June 2010
Idiosyncratic, sometimes surprising, advice on greener living. When you walk home from the shops with two carrier bags, about 1/1000th of the carbon footprint is in the bags, rest is in the shopping.
John Vidal | Guardian | 30 May 2010
Niger Delta suffers equivalent of Gulf oil spill every year—and nobody outside the area seems to care, least of all the oil companies. Forest, famland "covered in a sheen of greasy oil"
Douglas Blackmon et al | WSJ | 28 May 2010
Second part of damning investigation into BP disaster. Reconstruction of the fire and explosion. "The rig was unprepared for the kind of disaster that struck and was overwhelmed when it occurred"
Ben Casselman, Russell Gold | WSJ | 27 May 2010
Meticulous investigative reporting. Journal shows beyond reasonable doubt that BP was cutting corners, running risks, ignoring warning signs in run-up to Deepwater Horizon disaster
Gideon Rachman | FT | 24 May 2010
Advancing technology gives US, Europe access to huge domestic reserves of shale gas. Changes geopolitical fundamentals. Less reliance on Middle East, Russia. May account for Russia's changing posture
Christopher Helman | Globe & Mail | 19 May 2010
Revealing, informative. Softball questioning draws out BP boss, who seems to have no grasp of public anger over Deepwater. Compares self to Churchill. Laughs more than he should
Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn I Vox I 19 May 2010
Energy-saving tips and energy-usage data sometimes backfire. Below-average users may increase consumption. Registered Republicans particularly prone to do so
Scott Sumner | Money Illusion | 17 May 2010
Beautifully done. A drive through the ash-cloud. "When I first entered the greyish-brown curtain of ash, it seemed like a sort of fog. A few more kilometres, and it was darker than night"
Al Gore | New Republic | 8 May 2010
BP spill horrifies, because damage is tangible. But it's a tiny part of the problem. Global pollution produces an equivalent of Deepwater, unremarked, every three seconds
"Shelburn" | Oil Drum | 8 May 2010
Outstanding. Industry insider's commentary on BP blowout. "The most effective spill cleanup is a violent storm. In Alaska, we found areas prone to heavy storms were essentially clean after one winter"
Anonymous | Economist | 6 May 2010
Comprehensive overview of causes, effects of BP disaster, with counter-intuitive conclusion: "The immediate carnage that an oil spill can wreak does not normally lead to lasting environmental damage"
John Gapper | FT | 6 May 2010
BP blames past mismanagement, but Deepwater looks "ominously like the future" of big oil. Offshore drilling pushes the limits of technology. making "periodic, shocking failures" inherent part of work
Tobias Rapp et al | Spiegel | 5 May 2010
Terrific scoop for Spiegel. Tapes of 25-leader backroom summit at which Copenhagen climate-change summit broke down. China refused binding commitments. America yielded to Chinese intransigence
Susan Collier | Popular Mechanics | 4 May 2010
"When tub water gets dirty, rescuers move the bird to another tub until the water remains clear. It can take up to 15 tubs until the bird gets clean; one pelican can require 300 gallons of water"
Kate Sheppard | Foreign Policy | 3 May 2010
While BP cultivated green public image, in private it was lobbying Congress for more offshore drilling, and against safety measures that would have prevented latest blowout
Anonymous | Drilling Ahead | 30 April 2010
Oil industry blog recounts BP rig explosion, minute by minute. Interesting comments thread, too. Worth the effort, despite headache-inducing white-on-black display
Tom Bower | WSJ | 1 May 2010
Disastrous blowout in Gulf of Mexico follows years under John Browne in which BP spent heavily on PR, cut costs on engineering. New CEO had been tightening up, but not fast enough
Dave Levitan | IEEE Spectrum | 30 April 2010
Good short piece on what went wrong at Deepwater Horizon, and how it might be fixed. If remote-controlled robots fail, there are two other ways to plug the leak, but they take weeks or months
Editorial | Economist | 22 April 2010
Lyrical, even religious, leader: "One of the things that went missing in the shadow of that volcanic dust was a sense of human power. And as with the quiet skies, this absence found a welcome in many hearts"
Simon Winchester | Guardian | 21 April 2010
Volcanoes trigger long-term, long-distance effects far outweighing immediate destruction. Particle clouds disrupt, pollute, poison. Eyjafjallajokull was small eruption. Big one could extinguish humanity
Felix Salmon | Mother Jones | 19 April 2010
Very few companies have strategies for adapting to long-term consequences of climate change. It's too far ahead. One exception: Torres in Spain, which is moving vineyards to higher ground
Der Spiegel | 17 April 2010
So far, this isn't another Pinatubo. Rain will bring down particles. Worry comes if Eyjafjallajökull awakens its much larger neighbour, Katl
Alain de Botton | BBC | 17 April 2010
"Children would gather at the feet of old men, and hear tales of a mythic time when vast machines would fly high over the Himalayas and the Tasman Sea"
James Fallows | Atlantic | 16 April 2010
Skies are full of extremely fine bits of pumice with tremendous abrasive potential. Just the thing for wrecking jet engines. Prolonged airspace closure may be over-reacting, but better safe than sorry
Javier Blas | FT | 13 April 2010
Last year China became net importer of coal for first time. Indian demand rising too. World coal prices firming, seaborne trade reviving. Bad news for carbon emissions. Bottlenecks likely at coal ports
Paul Krugman | NYT Magazine | 7 April 2010
Primer on the economics of lessening climate change, mainly through cap-and-trade. Reads like a chapter from an university textbook, but since it's a textbook by Paul Krugman, that's not all bad
John Richardson | Esquire | 30 March 2010
Gripping long profile of Marc Morano, lobbyist for climate-change denial, who helped stoke international scandal around leaked scientists' emails. Cameo appearance by Christopher Monckton
Philip Hoare | Slate | 5 March 2010
Once we hunted whales for food, and oil. Now we demand to be entertained by them. What they want, most probably, is to be left alone
Johann Hari | Nation | 4 March 2010
Overwrought, but amazing if true. Much of America's conservation lobby has been captured by funding from private industry, secretly opposes serious action against climate change
Big Picture | Boston.com | 27 February 2010
35 photographs from the earthquake zone: a couple of them grisly, all of them stunning. And a thread of 1200 comments
Alexander Cockburn | First Post | 26 February 2010
In defence of Tillikum, whale that killed its trainer last week. Captive whales are imprisoned and exploited like slaves
Bill McKibben | Mother Jones | 25 February 2010
The more evidence of climate change accumulates, the easier it is for skeptics to find procedural errors. They are winning battle for public opinion, by saying what public wants to hear
Geeta Anand | WSJ | 22 February 2010
Subsidies for fertiliser helped boost food production in 1960s, but has since encouraged massive overuse. Now soil degraded, crop yields falling, food imports rising
Anonymous | Economist | 16 February 2010
Climate change summit didn't produce advances in pledged emissions cuts, but it did lock-in pre-summit pledges. Developing countries have assumed a larger share of burden
Ralf Neukirch | Spiegel | 15 February 2010
Once rivals in the German government, now they lobby, claws-out, for competing gas-pipeline projects: Schröder's from Russia, Fischer's from Azerbaijan and Iran
Editorial | Observer | 7 February 2010
Fighting climate change will disrupt society. Public needs to trust science. Scientists need to work more openly. Secrecy and spin are self-defeating
Walter Russell Mead | American Interest | 1 February 2010
Scientists broke laws, hid data, made bogus claims. Strategists pushed for action that political system couldn't deliver. Victory to the populists. Palin 1, Gore 0
Fred Pearce | Guardian | 1 February 2010
More fall-out from leaked "climategate" emails. Data from Chinese weather stations may well have been misinterpreted, and has since gone missing. Scientists covered up loss
Andrew Revkin | Dot Earth | 26 January 2010
Experts debate how Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can restore its credibility, after scandals over leaked emails, conflicts of interest, and false predictions
Gideon Rachman | Financial Times | 25 January 2010
Big countries lose faith in free trade, turn to securing and stockpiling energy, food, water. Global paranoia driven by economics, demography, environment, geopolitics
Jeremy Harding | LRB | 21 January 2010
Centenary of a picturesque catastrophe. On 21 January 1910 Seine river rose 8.6m, flooding the Left Bank. Newly built metro tunnels carried flood waters across the city
Bill McKibben | Mother Jones | 19 January 2010
After failed bid for international deal on climate-change, hard to imagine world leaders regrouping for another try. Priority shifts to national, technological initiatives
Margaret Atwood | Guardian | 9 January 2010
Birds inspire our stories, films, dreams, myths, religions. Now they are suffering so much from man-made disturbances that no bird species' survival can be taken for granted
Sam Hummel | Grist | 22 December 2009
Persuasive argument that "accord" was best option available from gridlocked conference, took broad range of national interests into account, gave grounds for hope
Mark Lynas | Guardian | 22 December
Eyewitness recounts last-minute closed-door meeting in which China refused any binding targets, calculating that Obama would get blamed for failure
Charles Crawford | Blogoir | 21 December 2009
Ex-ambassador casts professional eye over Copenhagen trainwreck. Too many at table. Bit-players wanted bribes, big polluters used chaos to duck responsibility
Nigel Lawson | Wall Street Journal | 20 December 2009
British skeptic rejoices in Copenhagen's failure, warns against a re-run in Mexico, argues for strategy of adaptation to climate change plus modest government investment in R&D
Alma Guillermoprieto | NYRB | 18 December 2009
Glacier which provided to water to La Paz has gone. Morales has been running the country relatively well, but water shortages are sure to bring renewed violence, instability
Johann Hari | 18 December 2009
Copenhagen outcome hardly worth having. No legal mechanism to enforce cuts, no reductions in fossil fuel extraction, no serious attempt to make past polluters pay
Clive Crook | National Journal | 12 December 2009
Targeting the price of carbon within an annual range, letting governments decide how to adapt, would be far more robust than country-by-country emissions caps
Oliver Morton | Prospect | 16 December 2009
"You don’t have to be an expert in denial to sense that, behind these geoengineering-is-not-an-alternative arguments, lies the fear that it really is one"
Colby Cosh | Maclean's | 13 December 2009
Sympathetic profile of Canadian mathematician whose effective questioning of global-warming data has brought him hostility, derision of many climate-change scientists
Rivka Galchen | Harper's | October 2009
Science probably could mitigate hurricanes, if public opinion and public policy allowed. But interfering with the weather is a taboo subject., and researchers are secretive
Jamil Anderlini | Financial Times | 14 December 2009
Hugely disruptive geoengineering project diverting water from south of country to north will go ahead, partly because Mao recommended it in 1952, and nobody wants to contradict him
Lian Denning | Wall Street Journal | 14 December 2009
Birth of an acronym, "BRINK", for swing producers whose output decides whether world oil in is short-term surplus or deficit: Brazil, Russia, Iraq, Nigeria, Kazakhstan
Evan Osnos | New Yorker | 13 December 2009
Rising oil imports in 2001 alerted China to need for alternative energy, triggering green investment programme that puts it ahead of US in some areas of tech, infrastructure
Clive Crook | Financial Times | 13 December 2009
The job of governments is to win consent of voters, not only each other. And if scientists turn into propagandists, they deserve to lose credibility with governments and public alike
Philip Levy | AEI | 9 December 2009
Most international treaties face common hurdles: they must appeal to elites and to voters, be verifiable, hold good for decades, and compel states to pay promised dues
Sarah Palin | Washington Post | 9 December 2009
Palin doubts man-made climate change, calls on US to boycott Copenhagen. Is the WaPo winding up its readers? More a "worst of" than a "best of", but still a must-read
Anonymous | Economist.com | 10 December 2009
Week-long diary, updated daily. Good, clear introduction to practicalities of conference. Today: struggling to spot the interesting details in the acres of boilerplate
Rachel Morris | Mother Jones | November 2009
One-fifth of Tuvalu's 12,000 people have emigrated, mainly to New Zealand. Will the rest have to follow? Or could Tuvalu buy another island, and move the country?
Clive Crook | Crookblog | 8 December 2009
"If the CRU emails show climate science as it is done in the real world, what reason is there to think that the corroborating research has been done to a higher standard?"
Bjørn Lomborg | Spiegel | 7 December 2009
Climate summit has wrong ambition: use taxes or quotas to drive up price of carbon emissions. Right approach would be to fund research into driving down price of non-CO2 energy
David McCandless | Information Is Beautiful | 7 December 2009
Visually-organised summary of main arguments made by climate change sceptics, versus those of the scientific consensus, compiled from public sources. Elegant, concise
Sam Knight | Prospect | 21 October 2009
Weeks old, now ungated, still an unmatched (and dispiriting) guide to the negotiators and the haggling process leading up to the Copenhagen climate change conference
Kate Sheppard | Mother Jones | 7 December 2009
Checklist for political agreement. Needs to include short-term measures to cut emissions; targets for cuts 2020-2050; figures for aid to developing countries
Joel Kotkin | New Geography | 3 December 2009
Singapore leads the list of top cities measured by infrastructure, liveability and economic fundamentals. Followed by Hong Kong, then Curitiba in Brazil, Monterrey in Mexico
Johann Hari | Intelligent Life | Winter 2009
Well-used statistics about effects of climate change brought suddenly to life by vivid and persuasive eye-witness reporting from Greenland
Olivia Judson | New York Times | 1 December 2009
Humanity's chances of surviving global warning, assessed by four aliens in a passing spaceship. "Don’t you see? The bipeds are in denial"
Martin Wolf | Financial Times | 1 December 2009
Climate change summit should agree on policy, at least. Right mix would be carbon tax, transfer payments for abatement, subsidies for green tech
Tim Harford | Financial Times | 28 November 2009
<p>Governments have made a fundamentally wrong choice by pursuing cap-and-trade. Carbon tax would work better</p>
Tony Brenton | London Times | 27 November 2009
<p>Crisp, diplomat's take. Political consensus moves towards emissions constraints. But too slowly. Sceptics take heart</p>
Isabel Hilton | Guardian | 26 November 2009
<p>China has made strategic commitment to low-carbon technologies, for climate security and economic leadership</p>
Daniel Stone | Newsweek | 25 November 2009
<p>Expectations have fallen, nobody expects a deal. So downside is limited, and Obama may capture any upside</p>
Richard Tol | Vox EU | 23 November 2009
<p>Cost of abatement outweighs likely benefits. Century of climate change equivalent to one lost year of economic growth</p>
Gerald Traufetter | Spiegel | 19 November 2009
<p>Probably no effect on long-term warming trend, but raises doubts about the predictive value of climate models</p>
Future of Global Oil Supply: No Peak Before 2030
Peter Jackson | CERA | 4 November 2009
<p><span id="ctl00_cphContent_dlstChunks_ctl00_cChunkFullTextLabel">Global liquid productive capacity shows growth through 2030. Then "undulating
Ronald Brownstein | National Journal | 14 November 2009
<p>"We have available the tools to solve three or four climate crises. The good news is, we only have to solve one"</p>
Philip Stephens | Financial Times | 12 November 2009
<p>Clear already that summit will not produce a treaty. But despair not an option. Lay foundations for deal, finish it later</p>
American Adviser's Iraq Oil Deal
James Glanz and Walter Gibbs | New York Times | 11 November 2009
<p>Peter Galbraith, son of J.K., helped Iraqi Kurds win autonomy. Lifting value of his $100m stake in Kurdish oilfield</p>
Elizabeth Kolbert | New Yorker | 9 November 2009
<p>Belated, scathing review. Authors "treat climate change mainly as an opportunity to show how clever they are"</p>
Simon Shuster | Time | 4 November 2009
<p>Russia wants to grow, pollute, and doesn't mind if the world gets warmer. Big problem for Copenhagen talks</p>
Jeffrey Ball | WSJ | 30 October 2009
<p>Fair attempt to explain why scientists propose long-term climate models, but can't predict ten years ahead</p>
Tim Flannery | New York Review Of Books | 30 October 2009
<p>Lovelock predicts imminent sharp temperature rise, near-extinction of humanity, Brits and a few others will survive</p>
Bill Emmott | London Times | 29 October 2009
<p>Combating climate change requires long-term mix of gradualist policies, incentives, technologies. Not all-or-nothing</p>
Pew Research | 22 October 2009
<p>Decline in numbers who think it's a serious problem, who think it's happening at all, and who blame it on fossil fuels</p>
Richard Powers | Granta | Summer 2009
<p>Subsoil riddled with 60 miles of clandestine tunnels built in 19th century. They flooded in 1992, crippling city centre</p>