RSS
The last year or two have seen plug-in hybrid cars garner much attention as a promising technology for cutting automobile carbon emissions. NRDC's analysts like 'em just fine, and consider PHEVs to be an important part of ratcheting down use of carbon-intense fuels over the next few decades? The caveat has been that the outlook for plug-ins to become a dominant technology has been 20+ years -- not fast enough for a world that needs to cut carbon pollution immediately.
But over at Climate Progress, Joe Romm has been dropping hints that a major PHEV announcement was coming. We got it today, in the form of a New York Times story on a tricked-out Saturn Vue SUV that runs all-electric for up to 40 miles (enough for most everyday driving), gets the equivalent of 150 miles per gallon, and could be mass-manufactured and competitively priced today. AFS Trinity, the company behind the car, calls it (predictably) the "Extreme Hybrid." Romm is definitely high on it (see video below); he's promised to post an analysis by Wednesday 1/16 of the implications for climate policy posed by this car. Good back-and-forth on the car can be found on AutoblogGreen, GreenCarCongress, and of course Grist.
Both videos below are worth watching; the first is a CNN report, the second catches Romm commenting on, and tooling around in, the car.
Other items of interest:
-
As more details come out about the U.S. EPA's Christmas present to California -- shooting down the state's landmark clean-cars law by the unprecedented denial of the waiver allowing the Golden State to set its own air-pollution standard -- the agency's action looks less and less defensible. The LA Times and Warming Law blog summarizes what California Sen. Barbara Boxer is doing to turn up the heat on the EPA. NRDC's David Doniger has a great post on the fuzzy math EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson used to justify his decision, and Andrew Revkin picked up the story on his Dot Earth blog; good reader comments here. (California also quickly sued the EPA over the decision; many other states and organizations have since joined the lawsuit. I rather like Warming Law's vision: Everybody vs. The EPA.)
-
A fish story: apparently a goodly amount of the grouper served in Florida restaurants is actually... Asian catfish? Kate Wing (NRDC) and Mark Powell (The Ocean Conservancy) have more.
-
Sen. James M. Inhofe's recent claim that he'd scrounged up "400 prominent scientists" who pooh-pooh the notion of man-made global warming is the subject of an amusing and somehow heartening sideshow over at Digg.com, the user-moderated news site. This Digg post -- which points to a Daily Green report that relentlessly skewers the credentials of the individuals included on the senator's list -- is hovering near the top of Digg's Environment section, despite the best efforts of rabid "deniers" to vote the story down or flag it as inaccurate. Even if a Digg.com top-stories list resembles a high-school student-council popularity contest ... er, election ... more than a legit poll, it's still satisfying to see the good guys trounce the villains.
Share
Mowing the Lawn