Environment

Germany, which generates 16% of its power from renewable sources such as hydro-electric, wind and solar, now plans to get 100% of its electricity from renewables by 2050. It is an audacious plan, but German economists maintain it will actually improve the German economy and forestall the dislocations of the global warming that will otherwise […]

VOA reports that the oil skimming ships are gone. The booms protecting islands and marshes have been torn from their anchors. Sand bags have been overwhelmed. The headline is that Hurricane Alex is delaying the clean-up. But what is really going on is that Hurricane Alex is making a real clean-up unlikely. Reuters has more, […]

Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico could force oil recovery ships to seek a safe harbor for as much as two weeks starting early July. since the upward estimate for oil flow from the BP site is 60,000 barrels a day, wouldn’t that mean an unimpeded volcano of petroleum spewing for the subsequent two weeks? […]

Aerial footage of tar on Pensacola Beach from Escambia County Sheriff’s Office helicopter.

T.L. Caswell on how Union Carbide’s negligence in the Bhopal chemical leak near Agra in the 1980s was punished late and lightly, whereas BP was forced by the US to establish a $20 billion payout fund right away. Aljazeera English reports on the ongoing Bhopal protests by victim families, and their new resentments about how […]