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The Joy PUC Club

California regulators approve landmark solar-power plan With one eco-tastic vote, California is set to become a global clean-energy leader: Yesterday, the state’s energy regulators approved about $3 billion in subsidies to promote solar power. Rebates will be paid to residential and business utility customers to encourage installation of enough rooftop solar-power systems by 2017 to […]

Turn off the computer …

... and go watch some TV. Tonight, cable channel Turner Classic Movies is featuring a classic -- and visually gorgeous -- eco-manga by Japan's master animator, Hayao Miyazaki, 1984's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. In a distant future, humans struggle to survive on a disastrously polluted Earth, constantly at odds with a toxic forest and rather horrible giant insects called Ohmu. But a princess, Nausicaa, suspects there may be a way to live more peacefully with nature -- and the other remnants of humanity threatening her valley people.

It's good, really.

RFK Jr. and other prominent enviros face off over Cape Cod wind farm

A long-simmering disagreement within the environmental community over a plan to build a massive wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass., is now boiling over into a highly public quarrel. The future of Nantucket Sound? Photo: NREL. The four-year-old battle started heating up last summer when Greenpeace USA staged a demonstration against well-known […]

Climate change is pushing this easygoing enviro over the edge

The one and only time I ever saw my mother become aggressive in public went like this. We were out as a family for a weekend leaf-peeping drive, an impulse apparently shared by most of the rest of New England, because the traffic along New Hampshire’s Kancamagus Highway was endless 90-degree gridlock. Every once in […]

Farcical.

The big Asia-Pacific climate summit ended today, and I suppose I should have something to say about it. Amanda's piece on the Asia-Pacific climate pact lays out the basics, and I said a little more here.

Thankfully, Ross Gelbspan has saved me the trouble of repeating myself, with this compact and devastating post about the summit. As he says, the whole pact is basically an attempt to subsidize the further use of coal.

Clean coal technology, with its reliance on hugely expensive geo-engineering projects like mechanical carbon sequestration, basically represents a full-employment act for companies like Bechtel and Halliburton. These projects are also wasteful in the extreme. Given their huge pricetags, the same amount of money would generate far more electricity per dollar were it to be spent on constructing windfarms. A real "pro-technology pro-growth" initiative would center on a worldwide project to replace every coal-burning generating plant, every oil-burning furnace, every gasoline-powered car with clean, climate-friendly energy technologies.

Yup.

A post more interesting than it sounds

This diary on dKos about Alito isn't all that great. It does, however, confirm what Amanda's article described: The basic bone environmentalists have to pick with Alito, and with conservative jurists in general, has to do with the Commerce Clause, which empowers Congress "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

(I'm not a lawyer or a law scholar, so take all that follows with a large grain of salt.)

In a depressing sort of way.

I'm depressed. But, "Blog something funny," says my editor. So here goes.

China's toxic rivers are still toxic! Ha ha!

We don't know why (wink, wink) but there's so little snow this winter that the infamous "they" are canceling snow sculpting contests and putting detours in sled dog races! Ho ho ho!

Rumor has it that the Asia-Pacific climate pact will not reduce emissions at all! Oh, my splitting sides!

There's a possibility that organic produce has more pesticides than regular produce! Ah, you slay me!

Soy and bug spray might negatively affect reproductive organs! Stop it, I'm crying!

Welp, the environment isn't funny, so it's a damn good thing Jack Handey is.

It’s a Floor Wax and a Dessert Topping!

Algae being harnessed to combat climate change and other eco-woes Consider the algae. Three years ago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology rocket scientist Isaac Berzin had an idea: use the slimy plants to clean up emissions from power plants. Today, at a power plant next to MIT, tubes of healthy algae slurp up 40 percent of […]

Croak and Dagger

Mass frog die-offs linked to global warming The mass disappearance of colorful harlequin frog species in Central and South America has long puzzled biologists, but research published in the latest issue of Nature fingers a culprit: global warming. (When in doubt …) The deadly chytrid fungus that’s killing off the tiny amphibians is flourishing in […]

Damn You, Bush!

Plants are major methane producers, new research says Methane: it’s not just from cow farts anymore. Apparently, ordinary plants emit significant amounts of the potent greenhouse gas. Clearly, all cows and plants must be killed. For the health of the planet! Ahem. Writing in Nature, German researchers suggest that the never-before-noted phenomenon — which they […]