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Friday music blogging: Lyrics Born

Lyrics Born is part of the Bay area Quannum crew, and like his confreres he has a dazzling vocabulary and amazing verbal skills. Unlike them, he has strayed farther and farther from straight hip-hop, touring with a live funk band and experimenting with a wide variety of far-out sounds. These days, his tracks sound more […]

Administrative law judges give controversial coal plant thumbs down — final decision up to PUC

One of the most controversial coal plant proposals in the country just took yet another big hit.

Minnesota's two administrative law judges on the hearings for the Big Stone II plant in South Dakota, Steve Mihalchick and Barbara Neilson, recommended today that the state Public Utilities Commission deny a certificate of need for the plant's transmission lines in western Minnesota. If adopted by the PUC, the ruling will kill the highly controversial project.

According to the ALJs' recommendation [PDF], the sponsors of the plant "have failed to demonstrate that their demand for electricity cannot be met more cost effectively through energy conservation and load-management measures ..."

In September 2007, two of the co-sponsors of Big Stone II, representing about 27 percent of the plant's capacity, pulled out of the project. The withdrawal rocked the project, but the remaining sponsors announced plans to redesign it and continue seeking permits.

Today's ALJ recommendation, which has been closely watched by the broad multi-state coalition that had gathered against the plant, is not curtains for Big Stone II -- but we may be in the final act. The demise of the plant promises to unlock the huge wind potential of the Upper Midwest region, which to date has scarcely been tapped.

The $3 trillion shopping spree

How are you going to spend your $3 trillion? I just put this in my cart.

Unprecedented land conservation deal

The biggest land conservation deal in California's history was announced yesterday, totaling nearly 240,000 acres in Southern California.

A couple of features, while not entirely new, are worth pointing out:

1. The deal involved allowing the owners to develop about 10 percent of the area pretty intensely and maintain some natural resource extraction while preserving as wilderness the overwhelming majority -- a good example of making a trade-off that doesn't pit economic and environmental interests against each other and allows for much greater public access at the same time.
2. New wildlife corridors are being constructed to allow animals and plants the ability to migrate; I have written about this before, since this type of flexibility will be crucial to ensure that species can adapt to climate change.

All in all, a good deal for California and the country. Something to celebrate.

From Death to Life

We’ll undertake ‘er Feeling deathly ill? Rest in peace on one of these slightly used sofas. Sure, they were coffins in another life, but now they’re in a better place: your living room! Love those British chicks You can thank global warming for an abundance of great tits. Ewes you can use Let us get […]

Colbert on gas prices and oil profits

(thanks LL!)

Snippets from the news

• EBay building has a giant solar roof. • Meet the eco-conscious YAWNs: Young and Wealthy but Normal. • Schwarzenegger won’t take crap from the auto industry. • Thieves target restaurant grease. • Rare iguanas found slaughtered. • “Eco-terrorist” sentenced to 20 years in jail.

Millions of Americans may not be able to afford heat or power this year

So, I spent almost $2,000 today ... to fill up our oil tank. We heat primarily with wood, but we use oil as a backup system to keep the pipes from freezing and occasionally on days when we're going to be out for an extended period. Our hot water is also heated with oil. For whatever reason, most oil heat in the U.S. is in the Northeast, mostly in towns beyond gas lines like mine. I suspect today's purchase may well be the last tank of heating oil we ever buy. Unfortunately, that's not true for most Americans.

Chastised by bloggers, Dell aims to cut down on waste

To paraphrase Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of loud, critical bloggers can change Dell’s packaging M.O.” OK, that’s a bit of a stretch — and we won’t go so far as to say “Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” But photos published on the internet during Earth Week of a […]

Polar-bear listing would hurt the poor, says industry

If the U.S. Interior Department decides that polar bears are endangered, litigation will be immediate from a group arguing that bear protection will “result in higher energy prices across the board, which will disproportionately be borne by minorities.” So says Roy Innis, chair of the Congress for Racial Equality — a recipient of Exxon funding […]