Latest Articles
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On March 15, Take Action to Stop Dumping Mine Waste Into Our Water
This post was co-written by Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign. There is nothing clean about destroying homes and communities to get coal out of the ground. Mountaintop removal coal mining is a dirty secret in our nation’s energy supply. More than 470 mountains in Appalachia have been destroyed […]
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Seedy tactics in Iowa and Norway in the news this week
Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybean seedPhoto: MonsantoThe first in a series of daylong federally sponsored workshops kicked off today in Ankeny, Iowa, to debate whether consolidation in agriculture — in particular in the seed industry — has stifled competition and harmed farmers. While it may be much more convenient for farmers to do their one-stop seed […]
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The Maine Lesson of Cap and Trade
Last week, I referenced an official from Maine saying: “The investments we are seeing in renewable energy, in energy infrastructure, appear to be the largest wave of capital investment in the state’s history.” Which is obviously great news for the state, especially during a recession. Since then, the Kennebec Journal has reported on the formation of […]
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The State of Electricity Prices
I was messing around with some spreadsheets, and out popped this little guy: The chart plots the 50 states — minus Hawaii but plus DC — with the price of electricity on the vertical axis and consumption on the horizontal axis. (I left off Hawaii because it’s a serious outlier, with average electricity prices nearly twice as high […]
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Ask Umbra’s pearls of wisdom on sleeping
Dearest readers, Yawn. Goodness me, I could use a nap — perhaps a nice long eight-hour nap to celebrate National Sleep Awareness Week and prep for Daylight Saving Time starting on Sunday (don’t forget to spring forward!). While I go catch a few z’s, enjoy my troll through the archives to snag slumber-related suggestions. Got […]
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Democrats toughen up on finance reform. Could it work for clean energy?
A funny thing happened outside the twisted world of Congressional energy politics. Over at the Senate Banking Committee, Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) announced he’s going to push forward with finance reform and consumer protection bill, even if Republicans don’t want to help. This comes after weeks of negotiating between Dodd and Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, […]
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Dumb grids
The smart grid conversation is stupid. Policies to encourage smart grids are at best minor distractions, and at worst contrary to the public interest. Smart grids are also the key to cleaning up and modernizing the electric system. These sentences are not in conflict with one another. The smart grid is the cart, not the […]
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Streetfilms: Fixing the car-centric city [video]
“Fixing the Great Mistake” is a new Streetfilms series that examines what went wrong in the early part of the 20th Century, when our cities began catering to the automobile, and how those decisions continue to affect our lives today. In this episode, Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White shows how planning for cars drastically […]
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The Climate Post: Uptick in denialism halts glacier melt, lowers sea levels
First things first: “The absence of an actual bill” is one impediment to the Senate taking up climate legislation, The Hill reported earlier this week. The climate leadership troika of Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) continue to work behind the scenes to steer the many interests toward a common […]
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Know your solar
Concerns about global warming, rising fossil fuel prices, and oil insecurity have prompted calls for a new energy economy, one that replaces fossil fuels with renewables. The sun is an enormous reservoir of energy; in fact, the sunlight reaching Earth in just one hour is enough to power the global economy for a whole year. […]
