Latest Articles
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Friday music blogging: K’naan
K’naan is a hip-hop MC out of Toronto, Ontario. (That’s in Canada!) He was born and raised in Somalia, in truly horrific conditions of war and deprivation. He learned to rap — before he even learned English — by imitating the flow of American rappers on bootlegged CDs. His 2008 debut album, The Dusty Foot […]
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What works for telemarketers might work for junk-mailers
I have a foolproof plan to fight spam: if the government gave out Viagra for free, then most spammers would quickly go out of business as their market would be undercut. Foolproof. Our friends at ForestEthics are trying to do the same for junk mail, except they have an even better plan: a Do Not […]
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Fox News story advocates for reducing meat consumption to combat global warming
This week, as I sorted through my inbox and overflowing number of “google alerts,” one particular story from Fox News caught my attention. In a decidedly personal yet informative piece, Andy Kroll of Fox News outlined the reasons why he was going to reduce his meat consumption by 75 percent in the upcoming months. The […]
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Major survey finds overwhelming public support for action on global warming and clean energy
Yale and George Mason Universities surveyed 2,164 Americans last fall about their “climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences, and actions.” Details will be posted at midnight Tuesday here. Here is a first look: 92 percent supported more funding for research on renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power; 85 percent supported tax rebates […]
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Dear Nancy Sutley: Get it right on mountaintop removal
As a new round of explosives shattered the ridges across mountaintop removal mines in Boone and Raleigh counties in West Virginia yesterday, unleashed by a recent U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, White House Council on Environmental Quality chair Nancy Sutley gave the first indications that the Obama administration plans to act promptly on […]
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Approach water management as an economic problem
Throughout the United States, water management has been approached primarily as an engineering problem, rather than an economic one. Water supply managers are reluctant to use price increases as water conservation tools, instead relying on non-price demand management techniques, such as requirements for the adoption of specific technologies and restrictions on particular uses. In my […]
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Obama is right to return most carbon revenue to taxpayers
As a climate change policy, President Obama’s carbon cap is a winner. It gets greenhouse reductions at the lowest possible cost and spurs the innovation and invention that will drive us to a clean-energy economy. But if folks are eyeing the carbon cap as a way to raise money to pay for clean energy programs, […]
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Healthcare yes, cap-and-trade no?
George Stephanopoulos says Dems can't possibly pass both healthcare reform and cap-and-trade, and they've effectively chosen healthcare. As much as he bugs me, I fear he's pretty much right about this.
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Glenn Beck attacks smart grid as socialist plot to steal our thermostats
This post originally appeared at the Wonk Room. Glenn Beck, the conservative ideologue whose show is mocked by fellow Fox News anchors, recently attacked plans to modernize our electric grid. After Carol Browner, President Obama’s climate and energy adviser, said that a smart grid means “we can get to a system where an electric company […]
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Los Angeles rejects solar plan, still likes solar power
Los Angeles citizens voted on a citywide solar energy plan on March 3, but the very narrow results didn’t become official until yesterday: It lost (by about 1 percent). That doesn’t mean the city’s electric utility won’t proceed with rapidly expanding its solar voltaic energy portfolio — it still has the authority to do so. […]
