Latest Articles

Power Shift recap: ‘Stuck on stupid,’ money pollution, and Snuffleupagus

Are you rallying in D.C. right now for the Power Shift 2011? You're NOT? Well, lucky for you we've been posting highlights over the weekend. Here's what you missed, you poor sap: Former White House advisor Van Jones wants to hold both parties to high standards, but he's not sure they'll live up to it. […]

Confessions of an international climate advocate at Powershift

I’ve just walked away from thousands of students who have taken to the streets of DC to tell the White House, dirty energy polluters, and Congress that they won’t rest until their vision of a clean energy future is realized.  It was a strange feeling, really, to walk away from all the energy and excitement […]

Germans pay extra for clean energy — is it worth it?

Germany has become a world leader in renewable power thanks in part to its Renewable Energy Act (EEG), which came into force in 2000. It established a feed-in tariff program that guarantees producers of carbon-free power an above-market rate of return for 20 years. EEG pays tariffs to solar PV, concentrated solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydropower, and […]

Stalking the wild salamanders of Manhattan [UPDATED]

Perfectly at home.Photo: Sarah GoodyearIf I asked you where the picture above was probably taken, I don’t think your first answer would be Manhattan. But that’s exactly where I found this fine-looking red-backed salamander: In a brushy, overgrown part of a park in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. This is the second […]

Obama meets with young climate activists after they stand up to him

President Obama meets with Energy Action Coalition leaders in the White House. Photo: The White HouseYouth climate leaders in town for the Power Shift conference got some powerful evidence that their public frustration with President Obama is getting noticed in the Oval Office: Halfway through a meeting at the White House between leaders of the […]

Supreme Court set to weigh in on whether we can hold companies responsible for climate change

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court is set to rule on American Electric Power vs. Connecticut, a case where the state of Connecticut is suing a power company for contributing to global warming. Trying to research the legal details of this case is making me cry, so I hope you people appreciate the following bullet points, which […]

Bill McKibben’s must-watch speech at Power Shift

Bill McKibben gave a fiery speech to young climate activists Saturday night at Power Shift 2011. Here’s the video and transcript: All right, listen up. Very few people can ever say that they are in the single most important place they could possibly be, doing the single most important thing they could possibly be doing. […]

A leading expert withdraws his name from the Climate Shift report

Matthew Nisbet’s conclusions don’t match his own report’s data.Professor Matthew Nisbet of American University has written an error-riddled, self-contradictory, demonstrably false report, “Climate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate” [PDF]. The 99-page report’s two central, but ridiculous, claims are: The environmental movement outspent opponents during the climate bill debate. Media coverage […]

What Google predicts for the future of life on earth

XKCD has collated Google's predictions for the next century, and it is dire, and also optimistic, and also weird. Another excerpt and some key findings below the fold, or see the whole thing here. Here's how the future is shaping up, according to Google: Jesus will return in 2018 and again in 2023, and will […]

What if the $152 billion to clean up Fukushima were spent on geothermal instead?

Here's a crazy idea: why not use the enormous geothermal resource under Japan — which is after all sitting on a "ring" made of "fire" — as a source of nearly always-on baseload power? I asked Alex Richter, an Icelandic financier of geothermal energy projects, how much geothermal energy $152 billion would buy. (That's the […]