Latest Articles
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Policy fixes to unleash clean energy, part 6
Having outlined ideal utility policy in part 5, we move now to ideal environmental policy. As a reminder, this is not the policy that could be accomplished tomorrow given political realities, but rather the long-term goal we ought to shoot for. If the only thing that mattered was good environmental policy guided by responsible principles, […]
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Creative borrowing spurs commercial retrofits
On the heels of San Francisco’s announcement last week that it plans to spend $150 million greening up homes, comes a new report that studies a slew of other innovative ways to finance energy efficiency improvements for all types of buildings. It’s no big surprise that the key to ramping up the energy efficiency industry […]
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Arizona introduces bill to redefine renewable standard to include nukes
In Arizona, a new bill has been introduced that would kill renewable energy progress in the state. HB 2701 would establish a legislative version of the Arizona Corporation Commission’s regulatorily-implemented Renewable Energy Standard of 15% by 2020, but with some tragic differences. For one, the bill would redefine renewables to include large hydro and nuclear. […]
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Amusement park grows amid rail line ruins
Photo: TreeHuggerIt’s one of Lima’s most unusual spaces: a set of structures that were going to be the railways of an electric train. In 1986, the project was dropped and the construction was left as-it-was. For years, these concrete columns and pass ways ‘adorned’ Lima’s landscape with no purpose, until this February. Spanish group Basurama, […]
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Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Mike Roselle
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very like to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?–Henry David Thoreau, Walden He’s sitting in the Southern Regional Jail, in Beaver, West Virginia, […]
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To reduce nitrogen pollution, we need new farm policies
California dairy farmer Joey Rocha. Photo: Stephanie OgburnTurlock, Calif. — Joey Rocha tends 2,800 cows at his Central Valley dairy. That may sound like a large herd, but in California, Rocha is a mid-sized dairy producer. Taken together, California’s dairy cows produce more than 100,000 tons of manure every day. Rocha and his fellow dairy […]
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How (not) to work out climate vs. weather at the office
Eat their heart out, Al Gore! Even if your climate change-doubting colleague doesn’t snow the difference between weather and climate, you can patiently teach him the truth without being such a beef jerky. But if that doesn’t work, urine trouble!
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Gates Foundation ignores reality, hypes latest GMO ‘vaporware’ instead
Another day, another misguided announcement from the Bill Gates Foundation. This time, it’s hyping a new GMO press release project from DuPont’s biotechnology arm, Pioneer Hi-Bred (via the Des Moines Register): Pioneer Hi-Bred is joining with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help scientists in Africa develop genetically engineered corn varieties that would allow […]
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Carbon capture and storage: A piece of the puzzle
In his recent blog, David Sassoon calls President Obama’s creation of a task force for a Carbon Capture and Storage Strategy a big victory for the coal industry. Let me offer a few thoughts on why I believe this task force actually is a step forward for all of us who want to put an […]
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Corporate farming to trump saving salmon?
What’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) up to? Under pressure from Stewart Resnick, billionaire corporate farmer & major campaign donor, Feinstein is attempting to put a legislative limit on how much water from the California Bay-Delta system goes to rescuing the region’s endangered fisheries. It would quite literally erase biological science & replace it with political […]
