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Climate groups grapple for a path forward from Copenhagen
Activists gather in Copenhagen on the final night of last month’s climate talks.Photo courtesy 350.orgOn the final night of the Copenhagen climate talks, several hundred activists assembled across town for a torchlight vigil, protesting against world leaders for settling on an insufficient climate accord and protesting against the U.N. for locking them out in the […]
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Bill Gates disses energy efficiency, renewables, and near-term climate action while embracing the ma
Billionaires say the darndest things! The above screen shot of a nonsensical Bill Gates piece dissing energy efficiency came from his website, The Gates Notes, which turned into a HuffPost piece, and then Yahoo News. Yes, even the very rich are very confused about energy efficiency, renewable energy, climate policy, and global warming — […]
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Is there going to be a bipartisan climate, energy security, clean air and clean energy jobs bill thi
I wouldn’t want to mislead readers into thinking that it will be easy to get a climate bill this year. Fundamentally, the politicians simply don’t understand the urgency on the climate science side, and they don’t understand it is a winning political issue with both progressives and independents in every single poll — unlike, […]
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U.S. slips in Environmental Performance Index
Researchers at Columbia and Yale released a new Environmental Performance Index ranking 163 countries on a broad variety of indicators—basically, how well they protect their people’s air, water, natural resources, and ecosystems. Surprise, surprise, Scandinavian and Northern European countries do well. So does Costa Rica, the country that shut down its military in 1949 and […]
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Palin urges America to stay addicted to oil
In 2006, President Bush famously said in his State of the Union: Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology … By applying the talent and technology […]
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Pseudo-science begets pseudo-insurance — and another phony attack on the IPCC is debunked
Climate change is a fact, and it is almost entirely made by man. It is jointly responsible for the rise in severe weather-related natural disasters, since the weather machine is “running in top gear”. The figures speak for themselves: according to data gathered by Munich Re, weather-related natural catastrophes have produced US$ 1,600bn in total […]
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Supreme Court ruling increases importance of local energy
The vision of a massive nationwide superhighway of high voltage transmission lines may have died last week in the Supreme Court. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Overshadowed by the (terrible) Citizens United ruling, the Supreme Court essentially upheld the right of states to block high voltage transmission wires. At issue was the […]
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The six Americas of climate change
Researchers at George Mason University and Yale broke down U.S. public opinion into six different categories [pdf], based on people’s belief in, and concern about, global warming. For the nickel version, see the graphic below: Of course, I’m sure there are more than six ways of slicing this pie. It seems likely to me that […]
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Study shows transmission costs for big wind are low!
Grist recently discussed the new National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) large wind study [pdf]. This study explores scenarios for supplying 20 percent to 30 percent of total electric energy consumption used by the eastern grid through wind power. (The eastern grid serves about 70 percent of the U.S. population.) Although it was not the main […]
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Continuing the Coal-Free College Push in 2010
Last Friday I had the pleasure of visiting Cornell University for the announcement of the school’s new combined heat/power gas plant. The school built the plant as the beginning of its mission to move away from coal – university officials estimate the campus will be entirely off coal in 18 months. This is the latest […]
