Author: Kevin Grandia

Sigh. Airline giant United was named “Eco-Aviation Airline of the Year” today by the industry trade publication Air Transport World. This comes at the same time that United is being called out by industry watchdogs for its major role in lobbying against new regulations to begin curbing the massive amounts of

Last week it was revealed that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office created an “enemy list” to include in briefing books for newly appointed Cabinet members.  Pundits were quick to point out that US President Richard Nixon also had such a list of enemies that his office maintained. However, the enemy

When I was first asked to help with the launch of the movie Greedy Lying Bastards, I really wasn’t too sure of the title. Would people be turned off by the aggressive tone of calling people like David and Charles Koch and other individuals behind the attack on the science

Five people are confirmed dead and 40 people remain missing in the small hamlet of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, where a train with 73 carloads full of Bakken shale oil derailed explosively, incinerating 30 buildings on Saturday. Local resident Henri-Paul Audette told the Huffington Post that his brother’s apartment was next to the

President Obama’s climate action announcement yesterday relies heavily on carbon capture and storage technology eventually paying off as a commercially viable option. But carbon capture and storage (or CCS) continues to be more of a dream than reality. And a very expensive dream at that. According to a database maintained

Today, billionaire clean energy philanthropist Tom Steyer held a press conference to debunk the myths that the Keystone XL pipeline will lead to major economic growth and national security.  Keystone is an “export pipeline” that would transport toxic tar sands from Alberta down to a tax-free zone in Texas and out to

Google, the search giant with the famous motto: “Don’t be evil,” is boasting about its involvement in a 2012 coal industry lobbying effort to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to protect the public from dangerous and potentially lethal coal plant emissions, according to a recently discovered Google case

As a Canadian it blows my mind that we can have the second largest deposits of oil in the world, but our government remains billions in debt and one in seven Canadian children live in poverty. I feel like we are being played for fools here in Canada, because foreign

It is being reported today that Canada’s Minister of the Environment, Peter Kent, would not allow the public posting of a final report by the now-defunct National Roundtable on Energy and Environment (NRTEE), a 25-year old government funded project that brought together Canada’s brightest minds to work on the convergence

DeSmogBlog has found that Environmental Resources Management, the consulting firm behind the Keystone XL Pipeline environmental impact assessment, has been at the center of controversial pipeline projects in the past.  Activists working against the 2002 planned construction of British Petroleum’s Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in Turkey, singled out Environmental Resources Management (ERM) for

Greedy Lying Bastards is a new film hitting mainstream theaters nationwide in the U.S. this weekend. If you like DeSmogBlog, you’re going to love this film. Here’s the Rotten Tomatoes review including theater times, etc. (Feel free to add your own star rating!)  The film, produced by actress Daryl Hannah and

We are hearing word that the press conference to release the U.S.. State Department’s environmental assessment of the Keystone XL pipeline proposal was originally scheduled for 2:00 pm est, today, but has since been moved to 3:30pm est.  Breaking: US government expected to release Keystone XL pipeline environmental assessment at 3:30

Yesterday, Gary Doer, Canada’s Ambassador to the United States, made headlines when he stated that: “If you ask the question: Do you want your oil from (Venezuelan President) Hugo Chavez or (Alberta Premier) Alison Redford, I think I know the answer.” Doer is making the argument that US President Barack

Have you heard of Donors Trust? Most DeSmogBlog readers have heard for years about how the likes of the billionaire Koch Brothers, and major energy companies like ExxonMobil, have pumped tens of millions of dollars into industry front groups that are paid to attack and deny the scientific realities of

This weekend, thousands of people will be out front of Barack Obama’s White House to protest the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline — a 1,879 kilometer length of pipe that will allow oil to be pumped all the way from Northern Alberta to refineries in Texas. It isn’t the

Newly appointed U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet on Friday with his Canadian counterpart, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. In any such bilateral meeting, it is paramount that each participant trust the words of their counterpart. After all, when it comes to the world of diplomacy, where wars are

A new video featuring four energy experts, outlines the issues surrounding the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, the Alberta tar sands and climate change. The video describes the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline as a “lynchpin enabling the climate intensive tar sands industry to grow unimpeded.” Watch it:   The video

A new report released by renowned Harvard political scientist, Theda Skocpol, provides the most clear and unbiased analysis so far on the failure of recent efforts to pass legislation to address climate change in the United States. Skocpol’s report proposes a critical pathway that leads to a nationwide cap on climate