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The game plan: The mother of all energy bills

(hat tip to Joe Romm for the title) The next big green priority after stimulus will be energy. It is possible that some of what I describe below will be broken out into separate bills — for instance, Markey and Platts in the House and Bingaman in the Senate have put forward freestanding Renewable Energy […]

The economic-recovery bill includes green funding and drops nuclear and coal subsidies

The $789 billion economic-recovery bill looks good in terms of green spending, according to preliminary analysis from the Center for American Progress. The House and Senate reached agreement on the bill on Wednesday and are expected to approve it by the end of the week; President Obama hopes to sign it into law by Presidents’ […]

South Carolina governor joins Wisconsin's and Michigan's in pushing back against coal

Yesterday the governor of South Carolina -- yes, South Carolina -- announced that he is opposing construction of a new coal plant in his state.

Why? Because a weak economy has demand down, the cost of coal has nearly tripled, and the prospect of tougher mercury and CO2 regulations from the Obama administration threaten to as much as double the cost of the project.

Because it's an economic turkey, in other words.

The head of the S.C. Department of Natural Resources also came out in opposition, citing worries about mercury pollution in fish and increased CO2 emissions.

This comes a few days after Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle announced that the UW power plant would eliminate coal (replacing it with biomass) by 2012.

And that was about a week after Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm's state of the state address, wherein she outlined a plan to free her state from coal. (Technically, reduce reliance on coal electricity by 45% by 2020.)

Governors in South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Michigan, all working to free their states from the grip of the enemy of the human race.

Dirty friggin' hippies!

A floating city takes shape in NYC

Take a good look at your plot of dry land now, folks, because according to the latest projection, the oceans could rise up to 21 feet in some places. Already, island nations being sipped up by the sea are investing in water-hugging houses (or land suitable for relocation), and flood-prone places like the Netherlands have […]

Is the U.S. ready for sane ethanol policy?

Imagine you're a policy maker with the power to commit federal cash and rules to a strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fossil-fuel use.

You'd want to build in mechanisms to make sure your policies are working toward your goals and not having all sorts of negative unintended consequences ... right? 

Well, that's what a coalition of green NGOs -- Environmental Working Group, Friends of the Earth, Network for New Energy Choices, the Clean Air Task Force, and New York Public Interest Research Group -- are calling for with regard to the nation's biofuel policy.

They charge that  the U.S. biofuel program actually "exacerbates global warming" because of greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen fertilizers and the conversion of grasslands and rainforest to cropland. Further, the mass production of monocropped fuel feedstocks like corn, soy, and palm degrades soils, increases water pollution, drives out biodiversity, and endangers the food security of vulnerable populations. In the process of creating these lamentable side effects, biofuels are offsetting a relatively small amount of conventional fuel use -- and are grabbing the lion's share of federal support for alternative energy. In short, biofuels have been an abject failure.

Whether or not you agree with their analysis, it's hard to see how any sane person could object to their policy proposals, which I've pasted below the fold. Their suggestions amount to safeguards to ensure that federal biofuel policies actually reduce greenhouse gas and don't contribute to a food crisis.

Under the previous regime, such standards seemed too high. Few assumed that President Bush promoted biofuels because he thought they might reduce gas consumption (never much of a priority) or mitigate climate change (which he never took seriously).

After all, as Dennis Keeney, emeritus professor of agronomy at Iowa State, recently wrote, "money, not science, has driven ethanol fuel policy." Keeney's assessment applies to U.S. biofuel policy since its inception under Jimmy Carter.

Will Obama do better? Last I checked, the only biofuel-related tweak the new administration was considering involved trying to get more etahnol into the fuel supply. But if the president does want to align biofuel policy with his environmental and social goals, he should heed the policy proposals cobbled together by the Environmental Working Group and its peers, pasted below.

The game plan: starting with a bang

In the last few posts, I focused on the lay of the land — the groups and institutions that will shape efforts to tackle climate/energy problems in the early years of the Obama era. Given that landscape, how will it all play out? What’s the Obama/Democrat strategy? What’s the green roadmap? Obviously, circumstances and unanticipated […]

The benefits of a carbon-free vacation

This is my cousin Tom's idea of a vacation:

He takes a bus across the Golden Gate Bridge to Rodeo Beach. He's wearing hiking boots, jeans, and a windbreaker. He carries a small backpack, volume of John Muir inside. And a sandwich. He hikes up the Coastal trail to Wolf Ridge, bundled against the morning fog, then down to Tennessee beach. Seagulls caw and whirl. Sandwich, book, nap on the beach to the sound of crashing waves on California's north coast. Stretches, shakes the sand out of his hair, hikes over the ridge to Pirate's Cove, then down to Muir Beach. Checks into the Pelican Inn. Has a cold Lagunitas Lager and reads a few pages of Muir, soaking in the clawfoot tub. Down to dinner, then a nightcap with locals. Really, Jerry Garcia used to play here? And you filled in on harmonica? Nip of night air and impossible stars before turning in. And that's just day one. There are three more days until Olema.

A carbon-free vacation sounds pretty good, don't it? He's got tips, trail maps, and community here.

Moving away from oil could affect investment in oil, warns oil

"While the push for alternatives is important, we must also be mindful that efforts to rapidly promote alternatives could have a chilling effect on investment in the oil sector."

-- Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Ibrahim Al-Naimi

Rep. Nick Rahall kicks off series of hearings on offshore drilling

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday kicked off a series of hearings on offshore drilling, an effort, he says, to determine the best way to proceed after the congressional moratorium on development of the outer continental shelf (OCS) was allowed to expire last October. Wednesday’s hearing came just a day after […]

Green lifestyle blamed for England's rodent woes

Britain is experiencing an explosion in its rat population, and green living is to blame.