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The safest place in Japan right now might be inside a nuke plant

Just 75 miles from where workers try to stave off nuclear disaster at Fukushima, another nuke plant is doing double duty as a tsunami shelter. The nuclear facility at Onagawa is currently home to 240 people displaced from the local town, who are hanging around watching TV and making phone calls while they wait to […]

New ‘Tactical Urbanism’ guide for aspiring guerrilla urbanists

With a few trees, some sidewalk tables, and lots of community input, a Dallas street was transformed.Photo: Go Oak Cliff Do you have the power to make your city a better place? It might be easier than you think. The Next Generation of New Urbanists (yes, these are young New Urbanists, because New Urbanism has […]

How to get cleaner cars and use less foreign oil

This post was coauthored by Sierra Club Chairman Carl Pope and League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski. It was cross-posted from the Center for American Progress. America is suffering from another oil price shock less than three years after prices hit a record of $147 per barrel in July 2008. Over the past month, […]

The conflict at the heart of U.S. energy policy: domestic extraction vs. cheap energy

Imagine you’re out to dinner with your spouse. When the waiter comes, she says, “I’m trying to decide between the house salad and the deep-fried twinkie. Which would you recommend?” You might think many things, but “she sure knows what she wants” is not one of them. Now shift to Washington D.C., where we are […]

Protect the Clean Air Act, Protect Americans

Lance Weyeneth really dislikes leaving northern Michigan and he rarely heads south of the Au Sable River. The avid angler works at one of the most popular fly fishing lodges in the U.S. – and when he’s not doing that, he’s selling real estate in the same area.  “I’m selling dreams up here. People want […]

Dilbert on clean energy innovation

Wisconsin Gov. Walker rejected high speed rail but wants the money anyway

Before he was the guy who tried to kill Wisconsin unions, Scott Walker was the guy who campaigned on a promise to kill high-speed rail in Wisconsin. There wasn’t a lot of room for interpretation or anything — I mean, one of his campaign websites was NoTrain.com, for chrissakes. But now Walker is asking for […]

Obama to reduce oil imports by a third via magic

Obama's energy speech today promises to be mostly a re-hash of previous administration announcements regarding efforts to make America more energy independent, but at least one bombshell has already been leaked by the White House: Obama wants to reduce America's oil imports by a third in 10 years. It's hard to think of anything — […]

Every 2012 GOP candidate was for climate action before they were against it, says Pawlenty

Former Minnesota governor and 2012 presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty was for cap-and-trade and emissions reduction before he was against it. Inconsistent? Hypocritical? An example of throwing away his principles to pander to an ever more right-leaning base? Hardly, says Pawlenty: It’s just what the cool Republicans do these days. Pawlenty: Everybody in the race, at […]

Obama’s energy security plan lacks imagination, ambition, stones

[UPDATE: Obama has delivered the speech. It was indeed weak-ass and deserving of an overall thumbs down, but there are more complexities to be analyzed, which I’ll get into in a subsequent post.] Today, President Obama will deliver an address at Georgetown University on the subject of energy security. This is, potentially at least, an […]