Latest Articles

Tesla speeds past financial troubles, opens retail stores across country

Five months ago, Tesla Motors appeared to be following in the footsteps of other American automakers. Lay-offs, a dearth of financing, and a spring recall of 70 percent of delivered Roadsters prompted speculation that Tesla might soon be the next casualty of the economic downturn. But Tesla proved just too cool to fail. In May, […]

Tracking property tax financing programs for renewable and energy efficiency investments

Berkeley’s program for leveraging property taxes to help homeowners finance investments in solar and energy efficiency is taking off–San Francisco was the latest to announce a new program.  To date, 11 states (and counting) have enacted enabling legislation allowing local municipalities to follow suit.  Which ones?  The good folks at the Interstate Renewable Energy Council […]

Even with economic headwind, U.S. still adds 4,000 MW of new wind — and a dozen new factories

The U.S. wind energy industry installed 1,210 megawatts (MW) of new power generating capacity in the second quarter, bringing the total added this year to just over 4,000 MW –  an amount larger than the 2,900 MW added in the first six months of 2008, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said today in its […]

Another major study predicts rapid warming over next few years — nearly 0.3°F by 2014

From 2009 to 2014, projected rises in anthropogenic influences and solar irradiance will increase global surface temperature 0.15 ±0.03 °C, at a rate 50% greater than predicted by IPCC. So conclude Judith Lean, of the US Naval Research Laboratory, and David Rind, of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in a new Geophysical Research Letters […]

The fantastical falsehoods of Roger Pielke, Jr.

Now that they’ve shut down his original blog, Roger Pielke, Jr., is desperately trying to remain relevant in the blogosphere.  Pielke’s preferred strategy – as it has always been – is to utterly misrepresent what people say and then attack that misrepresentation in the hopes of garnering media attention.  Baselessly smearing the professional reputation of […]

Looks like no Senate vote on climate and clean energy bill until at least November

As I have said many times “Obama can get a better climate bill in 2010” – although that is true only if he and Congress have a coherent strategy to do just that (which at this point, they don’t, see below). Since the CBO has made clear that health care reform is tougher than climate […]

Politico’s anonymous sources slam Barbara Boxer’s “abrasive personal style”

I was going to blog on this umpteenth attack on strong progressive women, but Matt Yglesias beat me to the punch here, so to speak. I’ll add my thoughts to Matt’s comments at the end: I used to think that US Senate Barbara Boxer was an experienced legislator with a solid progressive record on the […]

Will America lose the clean-energy race? Only if we listen to The Breakthrough Institute

The radioactive disinformers of The Breakthrough Institute (TBI) have broken through to the MSM again.  This time they got The San Francisco Chronicle to print their willfully misleading op-ed attacking “Obama and Democratic leaders” for supposedly failing to deliver on clean energy promises.  As we’ll see, this TBI article sets a new record for phony […]

Juliet Eilperin talks climate legislation with The Nation

The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin chats with The Nation about whether or not climate legislation has a snowball’s chance of passing this year, and if the bill currently being debated in the Senate can really “solve the problem.”  

West Virginia, Kentucky miners boycott Tennessee over proposed mountaintop removal restrictions

There will be no more excursions to Dollywood for Roger Horton, a coal miner who lives in West Virginia — at least not until U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) drops legislation he’s sponsoring that would limit mountaintop removal mining. Horton is the mastermind behind a tourism boycott involving miners in neighboring West Virginia and Kentucky, […]