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Friday music blogging: Regina Spektor

Regina Spektor was born to a Jewish family in Moscow. After emigrating to the states, she studied classical piano at the Manhattan School of Music and began recording pop songs when she was 18, with the “anti-folk” crowd in the East Village. When it comes to solo singer-songwriters, it’s very easy for whimsical to tip […]

Learning from past civilizations

To understand our current environmental dilemma, it helps to look at earlier civilizations that also got into environmental trouble. Our early 21st century civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond. As Jared Diamond points out in his book Collapse, some of […]

Friday music blogging: Wussy (again)

Wussy grew out of the remains of the Ass Ponys. (Lemme just pause a moment to savor writing that sentence …) The Ass Ponys labored at the fringes of indie stardom for years in the early oughts. After they flamed out, singer/guitarist Chuck Cleaver pulled together a new band called Wussy in 2005. Turns out […]

Crackdown on coal ash

The crazy quilt of regulations governing coal ash disposal across the United States got a new patch this week when North Carolina lawmakers passed a law requiring stricter regulation of coal ash impoundments, the giant lagoons where utility companies store the nearly 6 million pounds of toxic combustion waste generated each year at electric power […]

Reef Tank blog features ocean news, aquarium advice

If you’re curious about critters that live under the sea, I recommend you check out The Reef Tank. The website started as an information source and community-building tool for aquarists, and to that end, it features product reviews, discussion forums, and even a marine species wiki. But they’ve since realized that people who keep giant […]

Tom Freidman: Obama Must Mobilize Country to Pass Senate Bill

“… If he is not ready to risk failure by going all out, failure will be the most likely result.“ If Obama wants the Senate to pass Waxman-Markey – preferably strengthened – then he needs to put the same effort into it that he has begun for health care.  And you, the informed public, must […]

North Carolina governor calls for better regulation of coal ash dumps

North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) has endorsed legislation that would increase oversight of the state’s coal ash dumps, the massive surface impoundments that power companies use to store the toxic waste left over after burning coal. Responding to watchdog pressure, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently disclosed the locations of 44 “high hazard” ash […]

The Giving Tree

If you have children, you are probably familiar with The Giving Tree. Our version is a Stella cherry tree. My neighbor, Farmer Breakfield, allowed me to plant it on his property in the side yard between our houses way back when my first born was not yet a year old. It was just a stick, […]

North Carolina governor asked to address hog industry’s health impacts

Environmental advocates gathered at the North Carolina legislature yesterday for a press conference and prayer vigil asking the governor to create a task force to study and take action on health problems associated with industrial hog farms. The action came the same week new findings were published about the critical role hogs played in creating […]

Even More About Me

[9/08/2010] I am a California resident and climate policy activist with a particular interest in legislative policy related to climate change. Recent writings: “Going Beyond CAFE Standards: Feebate Financing Incentives for Fuel Economy” (September 3, 2010)http://ssrn.com/abstract=1624672 “A Decarbonization Strategy for the Electricity Sector: New-Source Subsidies” (January 13, 2010)http://ssrn.com/abstract=1427106 Circumventing the Weight-Versus-Footprint Tradeoffs in Vehicle Fuel […]