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Green crush: A jug of organic wine, a loaf of local bread, and thou

For one week, I'll be sending out poems to a few of New York City's greatest food heroes -- to the amazing projects, city efforts, local businesses, and community-based organizations devoted to transforming our food system.

Growing Water Deficit Threatening Grain Harvests

Many countries are facing dangerous water shortages. As world demand for food has soared, millions of farmers have drilled too many irrigation wells in efforts to expand their harvests. As a result, water tables are falling and wells are going dry in some 20 countries containing half the world’s people. The overpumping of aquifers for […]

How to buy (and price) clean power

You get what you pay for. Clean power mandates in the US mandate that we buy megawatt-hours of clean energy, but they don’t mandate that those sources be reliable. This isn’t to say that clean energy can’t be reliable, but rather that it is mis-priced. Increasingly, this is causing conflicts for utilities, who have purchase […]

Renewable Energy Keeps Growing: Earth Summit in Rio provides an opportunity for even more action

Several new reports released over the past few days show that renewable energy keeps growing, with more countries implementing policies or incentives to spur renewable energy deployment.  The studies found that renewable energy accounted for $211 billion in new investments in 2010 – an increase of 32% from the previous year.  Next year at the […]

From “peak oil” to “unburnable carbon”

Recall one version of the peaker story – peak oil as a repository of hope.  This is the take in which, despairing of other avenues to rapid, large-scale changes, we look to peak oil to at least save us from the more extreme forms of climate disaster.  The idea is that, as we burn our […]

31 states can be self-sufficient with local renewable energy

The following map was the headline graphic to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s 2009 report, Energy Self-Reliant States, unveiling the enormous potential for each state to meet its own electricity needs internally.  I re-created the map for web viewing, so it’s now even easier to share how each state can meet its electricity consumption with […]

Support local wind power on your utility bill?

Although Americans overwhelmingly support renewable energy, it’s usually much harder to find a way to support the development of renewables close to home.  This innovative proposal offered last session in the Minnesota state legislature could change that. The bill would require utilities to offer a green pricing program for local, distributed wind power.  Green pricing […]

International: The UN Clean Development Mechanism's Growing Coal Scandal

When is the last time you were paid for NOT showing up for work? Or better yet, got a bonus for doing the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to? That’s exactly what the backers of massive coal projects are asking the Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board to do when they apply for carbon credits. […]

With HR 2018 House – Once Again – Passes Attack on Water, Science, Humans

Yesterday evening, the House of Representatives passed The Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act (HR 2018), a bill that turns back the clock 40 years on the environmental and public health protections in the Clean Water Act. This brazen attack on public protections is the closest big industrial polluters have ever come to completely gutting laws […]

Shining a light on energy efficiency

Our inefficient, carbon-based energy economy threatens to irreversibly disrupt the Earth’s climate. Averting dangerous climate change and the resultant crop-shrinking heat waves, more-destructive storms, accelerated sea level rise, and waves of climate refugees means cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020. The first key component of the Earth Policy Institute’s climate stabilization plan is to […]