How Green Is Too Green?

Building two power stations a week

(NEWSER) - China has overtaken the US as the world's biggest CO2 emitter. A Dutch study says China is coughing up 9% more fossil fuel into the air than last year, compared with a 1.4% increase from the superpower across the Pacific. And the trend is up: China's industry is growing so fast, it's building two new power stations a week to meet energy demands. More»

Trading on eco-guilt, firms are selling worthless carbon credits

(NEWSER) - Carbon offsets—the credits gas-guzzling consumers buy to cancel out their carbon production—may do little or nothing more than assuage consciences, a Financial Times investigation concludes. Some companies sell worthless credits; others use them to finance environmental projects they had planned anyway. And consumers have no means to know when they're getting scammed. More»

Outside the tropics, trees merely trap heat, study shows

(NEWSER) - Planting trees to offset your carbon footprint not only won't slow global warming, it may worsen its effects, a new study claims. Trees growing outside a small band of tropical zones don't cut the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by enough to offset the heat their foliage traps, says atmospheric scientist Govindasamy Bala in the Guardian. More»

Do we have to read about the VP's weight in every dispatch?

(NEWSER) - Al Gore is having an astonishing political second act, leading the charge to save the planet, but the supercilious writers at the New York Times can't resist condescending to him, observes playwright Jon Robin Baitz, doing a little reverse reviewing in his blog. TheTimes, he argues, displays its "allergy to earnestness" in snide references to Gore's girth and Hollywood gloss. More»

(NEWSER) - Fresh-food pioneer Chez Panisse has joined a growing number of San Francisco–area restaurants in striking bottled water from the menu. The decision to serve local tap water only—flat or carbonated in-house—comes from an effort to cut down on the packaging waste and energy used shipping bottles. More»