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Obama administration can’t wait to sell China all the coal it can burn

Here’s a recipe for climate catastrophe: First, authorize enough new coal production in Wyoming to yield 3.9 billion tons of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Then authorize a new export terminal in northwest Washington to ship that black gold to Asia, where the other half of Chimerica will burn it to power the factories we shipped them […]

Three Major Clean Energy Victories This Month

With so much in the news lately, you might have missed these three recent, major victories in the effort to move America beyond coal, so I wanted to share them with you: Illinois: Last week Governor Pat Quinn vetoed two bills that would have put natural gas customers on the hook for two new coal […]

How the U.S. narrowly avoided its own Fukushima-style disaster in 1992

Turkey Point nuclear power plant in Miami-Dade county, Florida.Photo: ShelahDThe U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is refusing to update its worst case scenario models for the flooding of coastal U.S. nuclear power plants. Potentially, this puts the backup safety systems at reactors like the Turkey Point plant in Miami-Dade county, Florida, at risk of damage or […]

Daring scuba diver isn’t the only hero in the Japan tsunami disaster

Hideaki Akaiwa: Badass of the weekThis week I came across an extraordinary story about a man named Hideaki Akaiwa. He lives in the town of Ishinomaki, Japan, and works just outside it; he was at work when the tsunami hit. Told by emergency workers he couldn’t go back into town because it was too dangerous, […]

A pre-voyage interview with climate-crusading Navy sailor [VIDEO]

Before John David Shelton raised anchor to raise greater awareness of climate change, he agreed to sit down and answer some questions on camera — from tales of tattoos and piercings to the most embarrassing thing he’s done in the name of the environment. Spoiler alert: it’s not that embarrassing. Help John David reach his […]

A well-fed world is a vegetarian world

Samuel Fromartz doesn't like genetically modified food, but not for the reasons you think. We don't need more food, he argues in the Atlantic, but better access to food — there's actually plenty of food in the world for everyone to have enough, but most people can't get at it. GMOs don't do anything to […]

Friends help you move; real friends help you dispose of dead bodies in an eco-friendly manner

Think you get to stop being green just because you kicked the compost bucket? With land space for burial at a premium and crematoriums pumping potentially dubious people-smuts into the sky, you have got to be kidding. Stop slacking off, corpses: If you can't live green, it's time to start dying green. Short of a […]

For sheer deadliness, nuclear can’t hold a candle to coal

Chart: Seth Godin Relative to watts produced, coal kills 4,000 times more people than nuclear power. Our pervasive sense that nuclear is more dangerous, when the opposite is so clearly true, comes at least in part from a cognitive bias called the "availability heuristic" — memorable events that are easier to think of, like nuclear […]

Police apologize to cyclist for all the wrong reasons

Well, this is a first: On Tuesday, New York City-dwelling cyclists who were ticketed for speeding in Central Park got their tickets retracted and personal apology visits from the police. But the police were only apologizing because of a trivial breach of protocol, when in fact the tickets were apparently unfair from start to finish. […]

Solving solar's variability with more solar

This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. The solution to the variability of solar power is more solar.  It’s true that individual solar power plants can experience significant variation in power output, especially on days with mixed sun and clouds. “Output of multi-MW […]