Latest Articles

Who’s stopping it?

You hear a lot, from well-meaning Republican environmentalists of the sort you find on this site, or this one, or this one, that we’ll "never make any progress" on the environment until it becomes a bipartisan issue. Strangely, this scolding isn’t directed at the conservative movement, which has for decades obstructed any action dedicated to […]

Florida sees the climate light, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Leo, I’ve Got a Feeling We’re Not in Hollywood Anymore As Long As the Sox Are OK Crist Almighty Frankly, Madeira, We Don’t Want a Dam Welcome Back, Kosher Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Do You Really Want to Grill […]

Vermont renewable energy festival looks to the future

News today that a quake has caused a fire at a nuke plant in Japan follows revelations of operator error that could have caused an accident at the 1,316 MW Krummel reactor in Germany, owned by Vattenfall Europe. When a fire broke out at that plant in late June, operators panicked and put the reactor on emergency shutdown, against their guidelines, and put the reactor at risk. Then Vattenfall tried to cover up what happened.

I learned of this at SolarFest this weekend in central Vermont, where thousands converged to learn and share ideas toward a safer and more sustainable energy future. Fellow vendors said that it was the best crowd for this perennial event they'd seen -- was it merely the "year of the climate" effect? Perhaps, but there was a real sense of determination shared by all the folks I spoke with about my organization's renewable energy plans. As Bill McKibben said so well from the main stage on Saturday, this event used to be about good things we should do. Now it's about all the things we must do.

Stuff I missed

There are a gazillion things I missed over vacation, or meant to post about before vacation, that I’ll never have time to return to. Thus: a link post! I missed the MoveOn town hall on climate and energy. You can watch the candidate presentations here. Bill Scher has a pretty good rundown of who said […]

Funny safety joke

Have you heard the one about the Japanese nuclear reactor that caught fire and leaked radioactive waste into the ocean?

Using molten salt to store solar energy

We've gone round and round on various ways to store energy from intermittent suppliers like solar and wind before ...

The always excellent Robert Rapier has this interesting squib on using molten salt to store thermal energy from solar in his R-Squared Energy Blog.*

(While you're there you should check out his terrific posts on ethanol and biodiesel. He is in the interesting position of being a real advocate who can't ignore how oversold they are.)

A great piece in the WaPo

In Sunday’s Washington Post, Steven Mufson has an excellent big-picture look at the effort to fight global warming via legislation. It offers a sense of the scope of the problem: The potential economic impact of meaningful climate legislation — enough to reduce U.S. emissions by at least 60 percent — is vast. Automobiles would have […]

In which I clear everything up

Over the past couple of weeks, there’s been a strangely heated debate on this site about carbon offsets. In this post, I’ll speculate about why the concept is so charged, and argue that it doesn’t warrant all the heat. And then I will leave the subject behind, at least for now. Start here: why is […]

Jarid Manos, CEO of the Great Plains Restoration Council, answers questions

Jarid Manos. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? What’s your job title? I am the founder and CEO of Great Plains Restoration Council, based in Fort Worth, Texas;, Wounded Knee, S.D.; and Denver, Colo. What does your organization do? Out here in flyover country, our prairies and plains have been so devastated they have […]

Politicians behaving badly

I'm thinking of marketing a politician handshaking kit that would consist of one rubber glove that can be carried in a wallet or purse to protect potential politician handshaking partners from slime.

This started out as a comment on Kate's post, but got so long I decided to put it up front. As Kate points out, the Democratically controlled House just approved continued funding of abstinence-only education to the tune of $50 million. What really makes this unbelievable is that the results of a decade-long study (PDF) funded by Congress, released just two months ago, showed conclusively that abstinence-only education has no effect whatsoever on the sexual antics of teenagers. The bar graphs starting on page 45 sum it up.