Climate Climate & Energy
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Offshore Wind, Not Offshore Oil
This piece was written by my colleague Janet Larsen at the Earth Policy Institute. The enormously devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is just one reminder that stretching out an addiction to a polluting and planet-warming fossil fuel poses risks to our health, our environment, and our economy. U.S. oil production peaked in […]
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Finding evidence of climate change in the caves of the American Southwest
Julia Cole finds evidence of the climate record in some fascinating places. Cole is a geologist at the University of Arizona. Most recently, her research has led her deep inside a limestone cave 50 miles southeast of Tucson. Preserved there, within stalagmites that have formed on the floor of the dark, perpetually humid cave, is […]
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Gulf oil spill and Florida politics
There’s been a lot of discussion about what the Gulf oilspill means for federal clean energy legislation. The same thing has been happening at the state level as well. Take Florida. The Florida Legislature has debated clean energy legislation in the last several sessions, and has come heartbreakingly close to passage several times, only to […]
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How environmental groups are protesting the oil spill
Since the scale of the BP catastrophe began to register, there have been a lot of questions swirling around the political implications of the spill. Will it help or hinder efforts to pass a climate bill? Should environmentalists seize upon the opportunity to galvanize public support like never before behind an aggressive shift towards clean […]
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An oil spill looks a lot bigger in your (yes, your!) backyard
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is big. Twenty-five hundred square miles big. But that oily mess is out in distant ocean waters, not your backyard, making it difficult to relate to the scale of this petro-tastrophe. Helpfully, Google Earther Paul Rademacher makes it easy to imagine what the oil spill would look like in […]
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Clearing the Clean Energy Innovation Threshold
The latest from the Brookings Institution’s Mark Muro is a perfectly succinct summary of how one should judge the coming Kerry-(Graham?)-Lieberman Senate climate and energy bill, reportedly scheduled for release this Wednesday: What is clear, though, is this: To get to a good bill senators need to deal properly with the revenue–whether from offshore oil […]
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Oil spills and human health: Lessons from history
Cleanup crews get the highest exposures to both the oil spill itself and chemical dispersants.Cross-posted from NRDC’s Simple Steps blog. Oil spill clean-up brings workers and volunteers into close contact with chemicals that are known to be hazardous to human health. As we deal with the oil spill in the Gulf, it helps to brush […]
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Al Gore, Bill McKibben and the urgency of now
Question #1: Who has done more to build the 21st century climate movement, Al Gore or Bill McKibben? Question #2: Who is doing the most right now to build the kind of climate movement we need? Short answers: Al Gore for question #1, Bill McKibben for question #2. Another question: Is […]
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Renewable Energy Solution of the Month – Wind
That there is power in the wind is not a new discovery, man has been using it for thousands of years. What most people don’t realize is how much experimentation has been going on in this century. there is no shortage of energy..
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In the age of electric cars, who pays for highways?
Charging up a Chevy Volt. Photo courtesy mkooiman via FlickrHere’s a conundrum as the electric-car future arrives: Once we all start hitting the highway in our Nissan Leafs, Chevy Volts and Think City’s, who’s going to pay for our roads? State and federal excise taxes on every gallon of gasoline sold in the United States […]
