On April 21, Congress stepped back in geologic time when the House of Representatives passed an energy policy of the dinosaurs, by the dinosaurs, and for the dinosaurs. This energy bill is truly a "Jurassic" piece of legislation that relies on a limited energy source derived from creatures and plants that died millions of years ago. In fact, 93 percent of the $8 billion in tax incentives in the bill go to oil, gas, and other traditional energy industries. A patriotic sight. Photo: Tennessee Valley Infrastructure Group Inc. c/o NREL. Shortly before the House debate, one national leader said, "I …

Argentine town may be model for producing hydrogen from wind The people of Pico Truncado in southern Argentina know the power of the wind that whips through their open land; it rips flags to shreds, dumps dust on clothing, and musses hair. But it also provides more than half of the town's electricity and could bolster its economic future. Pico Truncado already has four working windmills, and a wind-powered hydrogen plant will open in June. A nearby village is participating in a U.N. pilot project as one of five sites worldwide to be powered solely by alternative fuels, and an …

Saudi-owned company set to profit from proposed MTBE liability shield OK, kids, follow the bouncing red ball: The Republican energy bill, pending in the Senate, is advertised as a way to gain independence from Saudi Arabian oil (boing!). Part of the energy bill, included at the insistence of Texas Rep. Tom DeLay (R), is a provision shielding makers of groundwater-polluting, potentially cancer-causing gas additive MTBE from liability lawsuits, despite projected costs of $8 billion to $29 billion to clean up MTBE contamination (boing!). One of the major companies that produces MTBE and would benefit from the liability shield is SABIC …

U.S. mayors form coalition to fight climate change, one city at a time A bipartisan coalition of 132 U.S. mayors -- led by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels (D), and recently joined by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) -- has issued a high-profile rebuke of Bush administration inaction on climate change. The leaders have committed to reducing their municipalities' greenhouse-gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, in line with Kyoto treaty targets. While the Bush team says Kyoto would devastate the economy, many mayors are signing on precisely for economic reasons. Nickels was jarred by a …

California flirts with high-tech electricity meters, new pricing scheme California, ever the leader in innovative greenish programs, is planning yet another experiment, this time involving electricity use and pricing. With up to 15 million high-tech meters, at a cost of around $3.6 billion, three California utilities plan to meticulously track consumers' minute-by-minute energy usage (something current meters can't do) and raise energy prices during peak hours to encourage conservation. Next-generation meters could eventually be used to remotely control energy-sucking appliances -- that is, utilities themselves could turn down your too-high air conditioning or refrigerator (creepy, but potentially energy-saving). The meters …

Low Northwest salmon run confounds fishers, closes fisheries Conservationists, salmon enthusiasts, and fisheries managers along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest are wondering, Is it something we said? They've been stood up by thousands of chinook salmon that were expected to swim up the river to spawn this season, but never arrived. Original projections estimated some 254,000 chinook would pass the first of many dams along the Columbia this spring, but so far only about 52,000 have, and dejected fishery experts are now expecting only a few thousand more, perhaps totaling a paltry 80,000. The numbers are so low …

Emily Gertz is a regular contributor to WorldChanging.com, and an internet content and strategy consultant for nonprofits. She has written on environmental policy for BushGreenwatch, and on the intersections of environment, culture, art, and activism for The Bear Deluxe and other independent alternative publications. Wednesday, 11 May 2005 NEW YORK, N.Y. Yesterday, nearly 400 people met at the United Nations headquarters to talk about changing the world. They were upbeat and enthusiastic about their power to get corporate America's attention, and to demand that it take climate change seriously. And not just take it seriously, but do something about it. …

Hey, I don't want to get a reputation. But here's more news from the beer-and-rising-energy-costs front: The New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colo., is hopping on alternative energy instead. To wit: The company uses methane captured from its wastewater to help power its facilities, and uses a biodiesel blend in its delivery trucks. No big surprise from an outfit whose employees voted, waaaay back in 1998, to make it the nation's first wind-powered brewery. When it comes to sustainability, New Belgium is "pretty impeccable," fellow beermeister Garrett Oliver of the Brooklyn Brewery told Fortune Magazine in 2003. "They're …

Climate scientists grow more concerned as Rome burns, Nero fiddles In most fields of science, lay opinion tends to be more alarmist than scientific opinion, says Carbon Mitigation Initiative codirector Robert Socolow. "But, in the climate case, the experts -- the people who work with the climate models every day, the people who do ice cores -- they are more concerned. They're going out of their way to say, 'Wake up!'" In part three of her magisterial New Yorker series on climate change, Elizabeth Kolbert says those calls are finding a mixed reception. In the Netherlands, a quarter of which …

Last night, General Electric Chair and CEO Jeffrey Immelt canoodled with Congress members and industry top brass at a swish cocktail party on Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., celebrating the launch of "ecomagination," an initiative he announced earlier in the day to ramp up development of clean technologies and lighten the company's Goliath-like environmental footprint. GE's wind technology in action. Photo: General Electric. Guests nibbled organic canapés and sipped wine produced by a solar-powered California vineyard (equipped with GE's own photovoltaic panels) as they perused exhibitions of the company's new technologies -- here a life-sized model of a hybrid-engine train …