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Snappy answers to stupid questions about smart meters
Smart meters are a revolutionary technology that could save money, save the planet, and enable a switch to renewable energy, so you’d think they’d be really popular with Californians, right? Except that California is also full of right-leaning tin-foil haberdashers and left-leaning hypochondriacs, says the New York Times. The two groups have formed an unholy […]
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Costs of inaction: the economics of high-end warming
Perhaps nowhere is the contrast between the science and economics of climate change as great as in the dueling metaphors governing the impact of high-end warming: “collapse” (following scientist Jared Diamond) vs. “reductions in the rate of growth” (following all standard integrated assessment models in economics, including those of Nicholas Stern and the IPCC). By […]
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Community wind projects still require financing acrobatics
Wind projects shouldn’t require financial acrobatics.Photo: Chris GawThis is part of a series on distributed renewable energy posted to Grist. It originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Community wind projects deliver larger economic returns and encounter less local resistance, but a new report released last […]
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The ‘greenest Olympics’ actually an environmental catastrophe
If the Sochi Olympics are green, then this logo is compelling to look at.Like a downhill skier that crashes right out of the gate, the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee has a lot of catching up to do if it wants to earn a gold medal for “the greenest Olympics.” World Wildlife Fund Russia and Greenpeace […]
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Obama’s climate omission: Can we disagree on climate and win on clean energy?
President Obama’s exclusion of “climate change” from the State of the Union has sparked wide debate across the climate movement.
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Obama’s climate omission: Can we disagree on climate and win on clean energy?
President Obama’s exclusion of “climate change” from the State of the Union has sparked wide debate across the climate movement.
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Thanks, climate change: Here comes Snowzilla
This week's "historic" storm will affect up to 100 million Americans; in Chicago, the National Weather Service is predicting the storm could be "lethal." Meanwhile, a new report says this is exactly what we should expect from a warming world.
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Los Angeles residential solar PV less costly than any concentrating solar power plant
This is part of a series on distributed renewable energy posted to Grist. It originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. A residential rooftop solar PV system in Los Angeles, Calif., has a cheaper cost per kilowatt-hour of electricity delivered than the most cost effective, utility-scale […]
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Review of The Rational Optimist — How Prosperity Evolves
Photo courtesy s.red via Flickr Crossposted from the Biodiversivist blog Just how rational are we? Had the optimists not prevailed would the Titanic have sailed? I’ve read most of Ridley’s books and have recently read my favorite, The Red Queen-Sex and the […]
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What a wind farm dispute in Michigan says about us
Earlier this month, on a snowy afternoon, the newly renovated Garden Theater held the largest crowd I’ve ever seen indoors in the small Lake Michigan coastal town of Frankfort, with the exception of girls and boys basketball games. On tap that day was a polemical documentary film, “Windfall.” Two groups of citizen activists held the […]
