Climate Climate & Energy
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Supermodels doing their part for the climate change cause
Apparently, a group of supermodels were on their way to a strip poker game when someone convinced them to say a few words in support of everyone’s favorite climate organization, 350.org. Video here.
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Coal Country CD benefits anti-mountaintop removal groups
As a companion CD to the provocative new film, Coal Country, the wildly eclectic Coal Country Music CD hits the stores today with a blockbuster list of Nashville's alt-country scene like John Prine, Kathy Mattea, Jason and the Scorchers, folk and bluegrass legends Ralph Stanley, Jean Ritchie, Tom T. Hall and Gillian Welch, rockers like Natalie Merchant and Bonnie Raitt, and a few other surprises -- as in, Grammy Award-klezmer band The Klezmatics and their beautiful rendition of Woody Guthrie's "Heaven."
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Solar power when the sun goes down — with help from United Technologies
Concentrated solar thermal with storage (aka solar baseload) remains “The technology that will save humanity.” And we are seeing more and more plants in various phases of construction (see “World’s largest solar plant with thermal storage to be built in Arizona — total of 8500 MW of this core climate solution planned for 2014 in […]
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Memo to PBS’s NewsHour: You can do better than that
So Joseph Romm is watching an otherwise interesting story on “efforts to convert algae into clean fuel,” by the otherwise very solid Tom Bearden of PBS’s NewsHour. Then, boom, he drops the media’s favorite wishy-washy hedge.
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Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power?
On Friday, Matt Yglesias made the point that only socialist state control seems capable of creating a robust nuclear power industry. After all, the only countries building nuke plants these days are the ones where governments are making the decisions. David Frum replied with a series of wildly overbroad assertions ranging from false to highly […]
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To unlock wind power, put a price on carbon
A stone marker in Rugby, N.D. identifies the town as the “Geographic Center of the North American Continent.” No marker identifies the state as one of America’s top two or three in wind-power potential. Yet North Dakota’s vast expanses and steady winds endow it with the capacity to generate more than half as much electricity […]
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Europe places outcome of Copenhagen squarely on Obama
The chief negotiator for the European Commission announced this afternoon in Barcelona that the failure of the U.S. Congress to pass legislation before December has doomed the chances for success in Copenhagen. A climate protest at the Barcelona talks: World leaders with ‘big heads’ moving cash from an aid money box to a climate money […]
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Gore on the Daily Show: extended dance remix
You know how sometimes Jon Stewart gets all smarmy and sycophantic when he has on a guest he actually admires? And you know how Al Gore has a reputation for being a bit stiff on occasion? Let’s just say they seemed to bring out those qualities in each other last night — or, as Stephen […]
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Is the U.S. Chamber changing its tune on climate, or just its tone?
On Tuesday, the U.S. Chamber sent a letter to Sens. Boxer (D-Calif.) and Inhofe (R-Okla.) about the climate bill. It seemed to be singing a new tune on climate policy, leading Sen. Kerry to wonder whether the letter reflects a real change in the Chamber’s position. While we welcome the U.S. Chamber’s desire to sound […]
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Three models of social change
Can we change fast enough? When thinking about the enormous need for social change as we attempt to move the world economy onto a sustainable path, I find it useful to look at various models of change. Three stand out. One is the catastrophic event model, which I call the Pearl Harbor model, where a […]
