We wouldn’t be here without her. We’ll never fully appreciate the sacrifices she makes every day for our well-being. Yes, it will take a very special gift to really say “I love you, mom” to our Mother Earth. Here are the top 5 green Mother’s Day gifts that our favorite planet has recently received and which may provide you a few shopping ideas for the other moms in your life. 1.    Green energy. The town of Saint Gouéno, France, just gave Mother Earth a new Enercon 850kW wind turbine, the first of seven and the result of a clever investment …

Last week, a solar energy standard moved one step closer to passage in the Minnesota state legislature, with an innovative new approach to financing solar power.  It’s a powerful first step for what would be one of the more robust policies to support distributed, local solar power in the country. The policy has three key pieces, outlined below. A Solar Standard Following in the steps of 16 other states, the House version of the Minnesota bill sets a timeline for (investor-owned) utilities to add solar to their electricity mix: 0.5% of electricity sales by 2016 2.0% of electricity sales by …

This week marked six months since Superstorm Sandy, and it was also the end of our 100 Days of Action for Climate and Clean Energy, which we kicked off when President Obama began his second term. In those 100 days, more than one million Americans from across the country attended large-scale rallies and local events, signed petitions, sent letters to decision-makers and used social media to engage friends and neighbors in fighting climate disruption. I'll let Aura Vasquez, a fantastic Beyond Coal organizer in Los Angeles, tell you more in this great video about the 100 days of action. Of …

Iowa ranks third in installed wind power capacity in the U.S., it's 5,500 megawatts behind only Texas and California (and much higher per capita).  But like many windy places, the turbines sprouting from the Iowa prairie are often owned by multinational corporations, taking advantage of the local resource and sending the electricity revenue out of state. Iowa farmer Randy Caviness saw an opportunity to keep the value of Iowa wind local and he's helped to develop eight utility-scale wind turbines with community ownership, providing clean, local and locally owned power to municipal and rural electric utilities in southwestern Iowa. Listen …

Peabody held its annual shareholders meeting in Gillette, Wyoming on Monday, hoping to avoid more of the massive protests the coal company has faced at its headquarters in St. Louis. Indeed, while Peabody executives tried to put a positive spin on the company’s outlook for shareholders in Wyoming, thousands of union mine workers converged in downtown St. Louis to protest against Peabody and its efforts to cheat coal miners out of the pensions they were promised. The protest took place outside a bankruptcy hearing for ‘Patriot’ Coal, the company left with those obligations to retired miners and their families after …

Two weeks ago, I visited Keansburg, NJ, one of the many Jersey Shore communities devastated by the fossil-fueled Superstorm Sandy. My ostensible purpose was to deliver a check from members of my organization, Forecast the Facts, who had graciously donated to support the rebuilding effort. But I also wanted to see first hand what a climate disaster looked like six months later, after the nation’s attention had moved on. If you want the headline, it is that Keansburg is still reeling from Sandy. But it’s a headline that doesn’t scream at you when you first roll into town. As I …

As I write this Brian Eister is on the 27th day of a water-only climate hunger strike outside the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, D.C. The only thing he has consumed since April 1st is water, sodium and potassium. Brian’s latest posts on his website, http://www.1future.net, report on both his continuing resolve but also the hunger and physical difficulties he is experiencing. On the 26th day he wrote, “The days are dragging on and hunger has become quite intense, but the sacrifice I am making here is modest. . .” I know what he is going through. I have done …

Politicians, lobbyists, and tourists alike can ride bicycles along a specially marked lane between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, part of the 115 miles of bicycle lanes and paths that now crisscross Washington, D.C. In Copenhagen, commuters can ride to work following a “green wave” of signal lights timed for bikers. Residents in China’s “happiest city,” Hangzhou, can move easily from public transit onto physically separated bike tracks that have been carved out of the vast majority of roadways. And on any given Sunday in Mexico City, some 15,000 cyclists join together on a circuit of major thoroughfares closed to motorized traffic. What is even more exciting is that in each of these locations, people can jump right into cycling without even owning a bicycle. Welcome to the era of the bikeshare.

Cyclists have long entreated drivers to “share the road.” Now what is being shared is not only the road but the bicycle itself. Forward-thinking cities are turning back to the humble bicycle as a way to enhance mobility, alleviate automotive congestion, reduce air pollution, boost health, support local businesses, and attract more young people. Bike-sharing systems -- distributed networks of public bicycles used for short trips -- that integrate into robust transit networks are being embraced by a growing number of people in the urbanizing world who are starting to view car ownership as more of a hassle than a rite of passage.

Today more than 500 cities in 49 countries host advanced bike-sharing programs, with a combined fleet of over 500,000 bicycles. Urban transport adviser Peter Midgley notes that “bike sharing has experienced the fastest growth of any mode of transport in the history of the planet.” It certainly has come a long way since 1965, when 50 bicycles were painted white and scattered around Amsterdam for anyone to pick up and use free of charge.

Today the Sierra Club welcomes the Antelope Valley Solar Projects in California, one of the largest planned solar projects in the U.S., as developer SunPower and owner MidAmerican Solar marked the start of major construction. The Sierra Club endorsed the project early on because it was planned and sited in a way that protected local plants and wildlife. The project location was chosen in strict accordance with conservation values, seeking to avoid harming wildlife or building new infrastructure. The projects are located on previously disturbed private land that did not have any threatened and endangered species. Although the project site is …

Can destroying a tropical rainforest be “sustainable”? Well, according to a decision taken yesterday by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the major industry-NGO body, this greatest of environmental crimes is now officially “green.” Palm oil plantations have driven the destruction of more than 30,000 square miles of tropical forest in Indonesia and Malaysia alone, pushing species like orangutans and Sumatran rhinoceroses and elephants to the edge of extinction. It’s the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Southeast Asia, and has propelled Indonesia to be the world’s third largest climate polluter behind only China and the United States. …