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A tool for the green-collar recovery

In “Retrofits for All,” I described an ingenious plan for extending retrofits to whole neighborhoods of energy-wasting buildings. Today, I want to take another look at one piece of that puzzle: financing. Energy conservation loans sound eminently reasonable: The loans pay for energy upgrades and, as long as the energy savings are bigger than the […]

Friday music blogging: Stephen Colbert

In an age of commodified holidays, only irony can protect that small core of genuine feeling from the depredations of a culture that seeks at every turn to exploit it. Holiday spirit is only possible through irony. With that, I give you “Another Christmas Song” from Stephen Colbert’s excellent Christmas Special:

Arctic Research Center: Underwater permafrost is thawing and releasing methane

University of Alaska, Fairbanks scientists reported the alarming news at the AGU meeting: A team led by International Arctic Research Center scientist Igor Semiletov has found data to suggest that the carbon pool beneath the Arctic Ocean is leaking. The results of more than 1,000 measurements of dissolved methane in the surface water from the […]

Kunstler’s tips to prepare for a post-oil society

This post by James Kunstler, “10 Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society,” is a little old, but still timely, as the economy is in the midst of its first major convulsion caused by a radical swing in energy prices. The first point is especially applicable: The religious belief in the ability to substitute any […]

R.I.S.E. rocks in new socially conscious live album

Their underground campaign classic — "Booties for Obama" — notwithstanding, the new live album released this week by the Atlanta sister duo R.I.S.E. (formerly known as Rising Appalachia) just might be the green soundtrack of the year. "Evolutions in Sound: Live" showcases Chloe and Leah Smith’s extraordinarily powerful and natural polyphonic range, drawing on a […]

Solar’s bright ideas for the green stimulus package

Carrying on one of the most annoying campaign memes (and boy is that bar high) into current policy discussions, the New York Times published an article that begins with the line: Move over Joe the Plumber. Spencer the Solar Installer is here. Every group under the sun has ideas for how their issue could be […]

Where will the money for public investment come from?

As I said the other day, I’m going to be asking a few questions about cap-and-dividend. Today’s question is about public investment. As people around here have heard a million times by now, climate policy is a three-legged stool: carbon pricing, public investment, and regulation/regulatory reform. All of these will be necessary given the size […]

Two trillion tons of land ice lost since 2003, rate of Greenland summer ice-loss triples 2007 record

The AP reports on new data to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union: More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming. More than […]

Semiletov tells AGU that, if released, 1 percent of ESAS methane could cause runaway warming

At a press conference Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, a Russian scientist who has spent the last 15 years tracking the release of methane from Siberia was asked if a huge surge he and his team detected this summer constituted “a global emergency.” Igor Semiletov did not say no, and did […]

The incoming energy secretary sees corn as a ‘transitional’ fuel crop

In his interview yesterday morning on NPR on prospective USDA chief Tom Vilsack, Michael Pollan touches on the former Iowa governor’s virulent support for ethanol (which fits well with the etha-mania of the former Illinois senator who nominated him). Pollan expresses hope that that Vilsack will steer U.S. policy away from corn-based ethanol, which most […]