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Pachauri’s call for 350 ppm is breakthrough moment for climate movement

Amazing news just arrived at 350.org headquarters. Rajendra Pachauri is the U.N.’s top climate scientist. He leads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which every five years produces the authoritative assessment of climate science. Its last report, in 2007, helped set the target of 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the […]

Tree-sitters do environmental regulators’ job

In a stunning blow to mountaintop removal blasting operations in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia this morning, two fearless protesters scaled massive trees and unfurled banners from their 80-foot-high platforms. Within 300 feet of the Massey Energy’s Edwight mountaintop removal blasting site, above Pettry Bottom and Peachtree in Raleigh County, W. Va., the […]

GOP team at American Energy Alliance runs ‘Energy Town Hall’ oil bus tour

American Energy Alliance staffers Kevin Kennedy, Patrick Creighton, and Laura Henderson on tour in Pennsylvania. All are former House GOP staff. Cross-posted from Wonk Room. The American Energy Alliance (AEA), a new polluter front group, is touring the nation to smear President Barack Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. Employees riding the “American Energy Express” bus […]

Study details health risks from TVA’s spilled coal ash

Exposure to dust and river sediment in the area of the massive coal ash spill from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston power plant could present a health risk to local communities. That’s the finding of a study published this month in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. It’s the first peer-reviewed, double-blind research paper to […]

No Impact Man, Elizabeth Kolbert, and the civic sphere

Elizabeth Kolbert’s latest essay for The New Yorker is another triumph, a perfectly pitched marriage of style and substance. It’s about Colin Beavan’s blog-turned-book-turned-movie No Impact Man, Vanessa Farquharson’s Sleeping Naked Is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days, and other recent experiments in (well-to-do, white, […]

Water must be on the table at Copenhagen talks

The participants of the 2009 World Water Week in Stockholm last Friday unanimously said that water must be included in the COP-15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December. At various sessions throughout the Week, a number of organizations and officials have articulated the reasons why water needs to be an integral part of the negotiation […]

Badass mayor builds bridges between working class and enviros

Mayor John FettermanPhoto: The Cap SolutionJohn Fetterman is not easy to miss. He’s 6’8″, 325 pounds, and usually dressed in a black work shirt and boots. He sports two large tattoos on his forearms, a shaved head, and a goatee. You might mistake him for a steelworker at first glance, but he’s actually the 40-year-old, […]

Washington Post features rail hack job from Robert Samuelson

This post originally appeared on Streetsblog DC. This is the big problem with Ed Glaeser’s New York Times posts purporting to analyze the costs and benefits of a high speed rail system. Despite Glaeser’s acknowledgment that his “back-of-the-envelope calculation” doesn’t “[represent] a complete evaluation of any actual proposed route,” the posts are sure to be […]

Portland’s newest high-rise has wind turbines on the roof

The cermonial urban-turbine installation.indigo12west.comTwo weeks ago in Portland, Oregon, a new 23-story building added something you don’t usually see in an urban setting: a series of four Skystream wind turbines, with a total capacity of 9.6kW. There are several reasons why wind turbines are a rarity atop highrises — beyond the obvious one: our power […]

Barack Obama is not Bagger Vance

Things are pretty grim among progressives these days, what with health care bogging down and climate legislation on indefinite delay; right wing crazies everywhere and Blue Dogs intransigent; the organized coalition that brought Obama to office fractured and ineffective. Disillusionment is in the air. In response, on listservs and private conversations, I’m hearing more and […]