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As GM announces plant closings, Obama touts green jobs

General Motors Corp. announced this morning that it is closing its Janesville, Wis., assembly plant, which produces SUVs and pickup trucks, along with three other North American plants that churn out gas-guzzlers. CEO Rick Wagoner says it’s because the company is moving toward more fuel-efficient vehicles, as fewer Americans are buying big automobiles these days. […]

Bite-sized version of longer nuke study is on Salon

If you are looking for a shorter, more readable version of my study, "The Self-Limiting Future of Nuclear Power," I've got just the thing. Salon has published my article, "Nuclear bomb: Nuclear energy, the sequel, is opening to raves by everybody from John McCain to a Greenpeace co-founder. Don't be fooled. It's the Ishtar of power generation."

As the article points out, back in May 2001, the Economist explained ($ub. req'd) that nuclear power had fallen out of favor because it simply was "too costly to matter." Today, nuclear power is nearly three times the price it was when the Economist wrote that.

DOE applies to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain

The U.S. Department of Energy has filed a formal application to construct a nuclear-waste repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. The application, which runs tens of thousands of pages, attempts to prove that 77,000 tons of nuclear waste could be stored at Yucca Mountain without harming public health, safety, and the environment for up to a […]

A tired pregnant chick “tests” six green baby books

Which baby book covers the gamut of green issues? Back in the old days, I used to do active product testing for Grist. Things like lotions and paper towels and CFLs — stuff that really got the heart pounding. But that was before a 30-pound orb attached itself to my front, slowing me down significantly. […]

Climate action advocates need a simple, compelling message on costs

As this lamentable New York Times piece demonstrates, advocates for action on climate change have lost the framing battle. If they don’t want to lose the war for America’s future, they need to step back, coalesce around a simple message, and get it out to voters in a disciplined way. The corporatist wing of the […]

A little bit of this, a smidge of that

The ol’ browser’s getting a little clogged up. Time to stop thinkin’ and start linkin’! Yee-haw. —– Eco-friendly bombs! A couple of crack economists at Environmental Defense Fund synthesized the results of several different economic models projecting the impact of cap-and-trade legislation. Their conclusion? A business-as-usual approach, continuing with today’s policies, puts the U.S. economy […]

GM considers selling Hummer brand

General Motors is “undertaking a strategic review” of its iconic Hummer brand, CEO Rick Wagoner said Tuesday, and is “considering all options … from a complete revamp of the product lineup to partial or complete sale of the brand.” As tempting as the sale of a widely vilified symbol of gas-guzzling excess sounds, analysts are […]

Listen to NPR today for a conversation about green-collar jobs

The drumbeat of interest in "green-collar jobs" just gets louder. Today at 4 p.m. EDT, I’ll be on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Here on Earth” call-in show, along with Keith Schneider from the Apollo Alliance. The show is an hour long, and you can listen live or later here.

Carbon pricing is about tweaking the little, everyday decisions we make

I’d like to add one quick addendum to my previous post on cap-and-trade. When we consider the extent to which we need to reduce our emissions in the abstract, it can appear quite daunting. This is especially the case when we look at the needed reductions and then focus on how big a role coal […]

Discovery’s new green network launches tomorrow

Do not adjust your television set. What you are seeing — the rebranding of Discovery Home Channel as Planet Green — is perfectly normal. Actually, it’s better than normal; it’s making “green” normal. Beginning at 6 p.m. EDT tomorrow, some 50 million homes will be introduced to 250 hours of original green lifestyle programming as […]