27 March 2013 (IMF) – Global pre-tax energy subsidies are significant. The subsidy estimates capture both those that are explicitly recorded in the budget and those that are implicit and off-budget. The evolution of energy subsidies closely mimics that of international energy prices (Figure 2). Although subsidies declined with the collapse of international energy prices, […]
By Jonathon Gatehouse3 May 2013 (Maclean’s) – As far as the government scientist was concerned, it was a bit of fluff: an early morning interview about great white sharks last summer with Canada AM, the kind of innocuous and totally apolitical media commentary the man used to deliver 30 times or more each year as […]
(Rainforest Rescue) – Perched atop the remains of the last tree, an orangutan looks helplessly on what was until recently the forest he was living in but is now only ruins. Armed with chainsaws and bulldozers, workers of Bumitama Gunajaya Agro (BGA), a palm oil company, have completely destroyed the rainforest for miles. Three other […]
By Joanna M. Foster 7 May 2013 (Takepart.com) – On the southern edge of Louisiana, there is almost as much water as land. You can’t drive to anyone’s house, you have to travel by boat, and sometimes there are hours of water between neighbors. It takes a special breed to make a home here, in […]
By Maria Gallucci2 May 2013 (InsideClimate News) – It has been more than a month now, and Amber Bartlett has had enough of hotels and apartments and trailer homes. Of crowded rooms whose thin walls amplify the bickering of her four children. Of piles of toys and clothes overflowing from drawers and suitcases. Of not […]
By Matt Smith27 April 2013 Yscloskey, Louisiana (CNN) – On his dock along the banks of Bayou Yscloskey, Darren Stander makes the pelicans dance. More than a dozen of the birds have landed or hopped onto the dock, where Stander takes in crabs and oysters from the fishermen who work the bayou and Lake Borgne […]
By Anne Thompson, chief environmental correspondent26 April 2013 (NBC News) – While the possible construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has made for contentious disagreements from the halls of Congress to ranches in Nebraska, the real environmental debate begins in a place most Americans have never heard of. Nearly 700 miles north of the U.S.-Canada […]
By Harold Meyerson23 April 2013 (Washington Post) – On May 21, Los Angeles voters will go to the polls to select a new mayor. Who will govern Los Angeles, however, is only the second-most important local question in the city today. The most important, by far, is who will buy the Los Angeles Times. The […]
By Mark Hertsgaard22 April 2013 4:45 AM EDT (Newsweek) – “It’s as safe as Dawn dishwashing liquid.” That’s what Jamie Griffin says the BP man told her about the smelly, rainbow-streaked gunk coating the floor of the “floating hotel” where Griffin was feeding hundreds of cleanup workers during the BP oil disaster in the Gulf […]
By Neela Banerjee 22 April 2013 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – The Environmental Protection Agency issued a sharply critical assessment of the State Department’s recent environmental impact review of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, certain to complicate efforts to win approval for the $7-billion project. In a letter to top State Department officials overseeing […]