by Christopher Mims. The further into the post-carbon age we grind, the more mainstream the notion of peak oil becomes. Long derided because it runs contrary to the only two things more American than football and corn syrup — that would be endless economic expansion and our right to commute 90... 

by Christopher Mims. For the next couple of years, Obama is playing defense on climate change, and that could explain the fairly tame energy policy he announced yesterday, says Ezra Klein of The Washington Post . Like the Kung-Fu masters of yore, he knows that he cannot hope to defeat his opponents... 

by Christopher Mims. David Vitter (R-La.) has 28 cosponsors on a bill in the Senate that would block EPA climate regulations (par for the course), expand offshore oil exploration (how soon we forget), and … open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. It's the political football... 

by Christopher Mims. Electric cars are the only kind that anyone will be able to afford after we run the eff out of oil , but charging them is a pain. Better Place has a Better Idea™ — when your batteries run low, pull into one of their stations and wait a mere three minutes while a robot... 

by Christopher Mims. Yesterday, we repeated an Associated Press report which said that President Obama was banding with the GOP to force the EPA to walk the plank — or, well, looking to compromise with the GOP by curtailing EPA's regulatory powers as part of budget negotiations. Shows what... 

by Jess Zimmerman. Is PETA a day early for April Fool’s, or have they simply whizzed past the point of self-parody? The group’s executive vice president has petitioned San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee to change the name of the city’s historic Tenderloin area to something that doesn’t... 

by Jess Zimmerman. Wow, Fortean Times was right about something: Airplane contrails really are dangerous. The carbon emissions from air travel are profound, but the water vapor planes emit is just as bad, or worse. And airplane-spawned water vapor is what makes up the high, thin clouds known as contrails.... 

by Christopher Mims. As of 2020, California will be getting fully one third of its energy from renewable sources. So says a bill passed yesterday by the state assembly. It's a “renewable portfolio standard” so aggro that it makes a WWE elbow drop to the throat look like a tiddlywinks... 

by Jess Zimmerman. In the midst of a hair-pulling, face-scratching tussle over the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases, a number of senators are looking into reviving 2008’s bipartisan “energy gang.” The last gang crumbled under bickering about high gas prices —... 

by Jess Zimmerman. That's not a joke setup, it's just Thursday. The Governator and the London mayor tooled around on two-wheelers today, looking awkward and getting hollered at by photogs, to promote Mayor Boris Johnson's new bike share plan for the city. Schwarzenegger praised bikes'... 

by Jess Zimmerman. Obama didn’t say much about climate change in his speech yesterday, even as he laid out some ambitious energy goals . This leaves the media and activists guessing at what his next move will be — he’s a sort of Schroedinger’s President, who can be interpreted... 

The world is getting breezier, according to a new study, which found a slow but steady increase in top wind speeds across the oceans over the last 23 years. Although global warming is a suspect, researchers can’t say for sure whether climate change is behind the growing gusts. Read the original... 

An African land snail Limicolaria flammea has been discovered by researchers in six locations in Singapore, perhaps heralding a new invasion of alien land snails in Southeast Asia. Although snails may seem largely innocuous creatures, past invasions have resulted in agricultural and economic damage.... 

WASHINGTON— A federal judge reinstated endangered status for the West Virginia northern flying squirrel late Friday, holding that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had violated the Endangered Species Act by not following its own recovery plan for the species in its decision to remove protection for... 

by Christopher Mims. Where my nuclear reactors at? HUH!?! Climate Central just rolled out a series of interactive maps to help you figure that out. Here's the world shaded according to how many nuclear reactors each country has: USA! USA! We have 104. That's almost twice as many as France. France... 

by Christopher Mims. Boffins at the Institute for Policy Research and Development in London have calculated just how much fossil fuel we have to burn to get to the point that we never have to burn them again. Their paper, “A Solar Transition is Possible,” argues that in a best-case scenario,... 

by Jess Zimmerman. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) hates bike lanes . He also, Roll Call discovered , hates parking legally — or paying the penalties when he gets ticketed for doing it illegally. Until very recently — that is, until someone caught him at it — Weiner owed $2,180 in unpaid... 

by Jess Zimmerman. Just 75 miles from where workers try to stave off nuclear disaster at Fukushima, another nuke plant is doing double duty as a tsunami shelter. The nuclear facility at Onagawa is currently home to 240 people displaced from the local town, who are hanging around watching TV and making... 

by Christopher Mims. See more here: Dilbert on clean energy innovation  Read More →

by Jess Zimmerman. Before he was the guy who tried to kill Wisconsin unions, Scott Walker was the guy who campaigned on a promise to kill high-speed rail in Wisconsin . There wasn’t a lot of room for interpretation or anything — I mean, one of his campaign websites was NoTrain.com, for chrissakes....