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An interview with the innovators behind ioby.org

We’ve all heard that eating locally is one way to reduce your environmental impact. But what about donating locally? In the urban wilds of New York City, a new non-profit is betting that locally based, small-scale giving can have a big eco-impact. Ioby, whose name stands for “in our back yards,” connects people working on […]

Congressional leaders head to China to make nice on climate

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.XinhuaHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in China this week leading a congressional delegation to discuss, among other things, climate change and environmental protections. But despite the public displays of unity on climate, there remain some strong divisions between the two countries on what needs to happen in […]

Obama admin delays decision on development in national forests

The Obama administration announced on Thursday that it is delaying a decision on policy that guides the construction of new roads and other development in areas of national forests for one year. An interim directive will guide land use in roadless areas in the meantime. Delayed gratification for roadless advocates. The new directive, issued by […]

Counting the real progress on climate action

This piece was co-written by Nina Hachigian and Julian Wong of the Center for American Progress. —– We are now entering the six-month period before the U.N. climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, which are intended to hammer out a successor treaty to the Kyoto protocol that expires in 2012. Progress on climate policy domestically will […]

National River Heroes announced

River Network is a crucial national organization working to build the capacity and effectiveness of grassroots activists and groups that work to improve water quality. This weekend at its annual River Rally in Baltimore, 6 new River Heroes will be named. Here’s your sneak peek: Dr. T. Allan CompFounder and Coordinator of the Appalachian Coal […]

Liberals aren’t laughing at Mike Judge’s new show, but not for the reason you think

Let me say one thing: I love Mike Judge. Love. I could watch his cubemate gangstas smashing that copier endlessly, and I can still hear Hank Hill’s voice drawling, “Bobbeh!” The man is funneh — which is why I had high hopes for last night’s premiere of The Goode Family. Mike Judge and Gerald Goode.ABCIt’s […]

Draft Negotiating Text Proposed for Copenhagen Agreement (Part 1)

The draft negotiating texts for the Copenhagen agreement are now out.  Just like in the US Congressional debate on climate legislation and other parliamentary debates around the world, you need to have a proposal on paper before you can make changes, find consensus, and get agreement that can be signed into law (ratified, etc.).  Sort […]

Lockheed-Martin to build large CSP plant with thermal storage in Arizona

What is the best evidence that concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) aka solar baseload is indeed a core climate solution with big near-term — and very big medium-term — promise?  One of the country’s biggest companies, Lockheed-Martin, with 2008 sales of $42.7 billion, has jumped into the race to build the biggest CSP plant with […]

Do the 2 billion offsets allowed in Waxman-Markey gut the emissions targets? Part 1

The flaw in the Waxman-Markey bill is not the too-many offsets that domestic polluters are (potentially) allowed to purchase in lieu of actually reducing their own emissions. The flaw in Waxman-Markey is the too-mild 2020 target — a 17% reduction from 2005 levels — which will be so easy to achieve with various low-cost clean […]

The wonderful politics of cap-and-trade: A closer look at Waxman-Markey

The headline of this post is not meant to be ironic. Despite all the hand-wringing in the press and the blogosphere about a political “give-away” of allowances for the cap-and-trade system in the Waxman-Markey bill voted out of committee last week, the politics of cap-and-trade systems are truly quite wonderful, which is why these systems […]