p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px Arial} span.s1 {text-decoration: underline ; color: #1f0199} Clean energy isn't about climate change any more, it's about China. So says cleantech investor Alex Taussig. That's his takeaway from last week's summit of ARPA-E, the government agency tasked with funding energy innovations so crazy or with such far-off payouts that no private company would ever touch them. "It used to be that the [three] legs of the cleantech stool were Economics, Security, and Environment," Taussig blogs at GigaOm. But in an uncertain political and economic climate, the environment has taken a back seat to a …

A worker at a motor scrap recycling plantPhoto: Adam Minter Cheap, un-unionized, un-regulated labor helps the environment in the U.S. and China, argues Adam Minter, a journalist who has been chronicling the "engine breakers" of Shanghai. China's human-powered recycling plants break down and sift through junked cars and other scrap metal, searching for valuable reusable materials. It's a greener option than just letting them rust, Minter says, and pretty much the only workable method for recycling it. What [the worker pictured is] doing is good for the environments of both China (where she's doing it) and the United States (where …

Okay, not ALL public-spirited millennials are becoming chuggers, i.e. those well-meaning people with clipboards who waylay you.Photo: Howard LakeWell, The New York Times has finally found a trend to report on that doesn't consist of three people in Park Slope. The trouble is, they're not sure exactly what that trend is. Either millennials -- otherwise known as "kids these days" -- are more likely to get do-goodnik jobs because they're big-hearted givers, or they're more likely to get do-goodnik jobs because the recession put soulless corporate money out of reach. Interest in nonprofit and service jobs is definitely going up: …

Karen Martinsen Fleming.Join in the conversation below about green jobs, green MBAs, and business socks (OK, not really). Karen Martinsen Fleming, Harvard MBA, director of the Sustainable MBA program at Green Mountain College, is on hand to answer your questions. Want to know more about Fleming? She has impressive business cred ranging from executive positions at Seventh Generation and Stonyfield Farm to managing at Procter & Gamble. At Seventh Generation, she led the brand's relaunch, new product development, and the company’s first national advertising campaign. At Stonyfield Farm, she developed and launched yobaby!, one of the most successful new products …

Hasta la vista, air pollution.He's back. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday all but called for a Tunisian-style revolution to overturn the United States' old energy order. "It is breathtaking to see: people by the hundreds of thousands who want change ... who want to throw off the old order and subvert the status quo. It is fascinating to me how rapidly the debate in the Middle East shifted from -- could the people rise up to could the rulers hang on?" Scharzenegger said at the United States Department of Energy's ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in National Harbor, Md., according …

The president gives a preview of his budget in his weekly address.Republicans are vowing to fight President Obama's newly released budget for the 2012 fiscal year. Among other things, the new budget includes a few significant changes to spending on climate and energy research. In the energy sector, it calls for slashing tax breaks and loopholes for fossil fuel producers to bring in about $4 billion dollars of additional revenue. Obama has asked to end these fossil fuel subsidies in the past two years' budgets, however, and was shot down each time. (Meanwhile, a House bill called the Ending Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act would …

If the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) had been an energy bill, it would arguably have been the single-most important piece of clean energy legislation in our nation's history. It drove unprecedented new investments -- both public and private -- into modernizing America's clean energy infrastructure. And its clean energy provisions alone have already saved or created 63,000 jobs and are expected to create more than 700,000 jobs by 2012. Now that ARRA has run its course, we need to stay committed to these investments to keep building the U.S. clean energy industry and remain globally competitive. Newly elected …

This article was cross-posted from the Center for American Progress. President Barack Obama's State of the Union on Jan. 25, 2011, waved the green flag for innovation and competition in the cleantech sector. He proposed a number of programs to speed the development and manufacturing of domestic energy efficiency and renewable energy sectors to help American businesses race with their Chinese, German, and other competitors. But before the president's proposals had completed their initial laps in Congress, the Republicans' proposed House "continuing resolution" (or spending bill) for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 (FY 2011) waves the yellow caution flag …

Photo: SALT District Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. Coauthored by Aaron Welch. Take one part Paducah (arts-driven revitalization), one part Old North Saint Louis (incremental restoration of abandoned historic properties), mix in some serious winter weather, and you might just come out with something a lot like the Syracuse (NY) SALT District, an ambitious and fascinating arts-and-technology-driven revitalization effort. According to the project's web site, the initiative is aimed at nothing less than creating "a new epicenter of artistic and cultural development in the Syracuse and Central Upstate New York area." It is being led by the Near …