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Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree will be efficiently lit

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is up; once it’s lit on Nov. 28, we can no longer deny that The Holiday Season is in full swing. We can, however, ogle the tree guilt-free, as the towering evergreen will be lit by energy-efficient LED bulbs and powered in part by solar energy.

Full-cell company bought by Daimler and Ford

Ballard -- the Canadian fuel-cell company that once hoped to be the "Intel Inside of the hydrogen car revolution -- has sold off its automotive fuel-cell business to Daimler and Ford.

You can listen to a good CBC radio story on it, which includes an interview of me (click on "Listen to the Current," Part 2). You can read Toronto Star columnist Tyler Hamilton on the story here. A Financial Post post piece headlines the story bluntly: "Hydrogen highway hits dead end: Ballard's talks with potential buyers is admission that dream of hydrogen fuel car is dead: analyst."

The story has a keen interpretation of the sale's meaning from Research Capital analyst Jon Hykawy:

Thanksgiving Day game will be carbon neutral

Plan to watch a little football tomorrow? Like, um, all day long? Well, be sure to tune in to watch the Lions play the Packers in the first carbon-neutral football game evah.

Civilization …

… is doomed.

Umbra on reheating coffee

Dear Umbra, As a web developer for a certain respectable online magazine somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, I drink a lot of coffee to keep me alert and my very demanding employers happy. However, in my constant imbibing of the dark elixir, I’m concerned about the energy use involved. Specifically, I can only drink coffee […]

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown makes ambitious climate speech

In his first major speech on the environment, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suggested that Britain could aim to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. To accomplish said goal, Brown promised that all new dwellings in Britain will be zero-carbon by 2016, and that free insulation, low-energy light bulbs, and efficient appliances […]

Tobis on the multidimensionality of the climate discussion

Readers know that I was mightily bothered by Andy Revkin’s attempt to classify certain thinkers as part of the "middle" of the climate debate. Some folks have attacked Revkin because they think one "side" — the "alarmist" side — is correct. That wasn’t quite my point. What I was trying to get at I just […]

Have an organic, free-range, local Thanksgiving

If you’ve waited ’til the last minute to buy ingredients for your Thanksgiving feast, allow us to suggest that you seek out turkeys of the organic, grass-fed, free-range, local, and/or heritage variety. Because no one’s thankful for pesticides in their gristle (or for butylated hydroxytoluene, for that matter). Apples, celery, and potatoes are all high […]

Drastic delays proposed for Hanford Nuclear Reservation cleanup

The following is a guest post from Gina Barteletti, publications and volunteer coordinator at Heart of America Northwest. —– The U.S. Department of Energy is proposing to add more deadly, toxic waste to Washington State’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation before existing waste is cleaned up. At the same time, DOE is proposing changes to the Tri-Party […]

How oil-intense is your state’s economy?

Last time I checked, oil prices were hovering just below $100 per barrel. This reminds me of something I used to obsess about: high oil prices hit some places harder than others.

All else being equal, oil-efficient economies are more insulated from oil price shocks than are economies that require large oil inputs to function. I'm not talking about the amount of oil consumption, but about the "oil-intensity" of an economy. New York state consumes a lot of oil, and it also produces a lot of wealth. Other states, such as Louisiana, consume a lot of oil, but don't produce anywhere near as much wealth per unit of energy. (In fact, New York produces five times as much wealth per barrel of oil as Louisiana.)

Just so, when oil prices skyrocket, Rhode Island suffers less pain than Texas. And Massachusetts feels less of a pinch than Wyoming. So at the risk of oversimplification, I'll propose a little schema for the future:

1. If the future is likely to bring high oil prices, and
2. we'd like to remain prosperous, then
3. we should probably start weaning our economies from petroleum.

Brilliant, I know.

I guess one potential lesson here is that our big capital investments shouldn't expose us to decades of oil price shocks. (Yeah, I'm talking to you, highway.) They should insulate us from high oil prices. (Oh, hi there, compact walkable neighborhood.)

So, how do all 50 states stack up? Find out below the jump ...