The Environment

Underscoring its gravity, climate change is driving what may be the single most important transition underway in our economy: the folding of energy's true cost into the prices of fossil fuels — and the impact of these prices on the development of new, carbon-free (or at least carbon-light) sources. Environmental Capital is the Wall Street Journal's spotlight on this central trend, a meaty, up-to-the-minute service fed by scrappy, tireless, and above all professional reporters — not activists, advocates or observers in their jammies. This blog is a live textbook for understanding the hole we're in, and how we're trying to climb out of it — even as we dig ourselves deeper.

Sample Environmental Capital post: Another cautionary tale about how not to fight climate change: By giving away greenhouse-gas emissions permits for free, Europe may hand power companies windfall profits of up to 71 billion euros — about $100 billion — and undermine the fight to curb emissions.