Climate Climate & Energy
All Stories
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Clean Energy Forums are popping up in target states across the country. What about your state?
From coast to coast, teams of young volunteers are organizing Clean Energy Forums. As part of Focus the Nation‘s campaign Community and the Road to Copenhagen, young organizers are engaging their communities for a day of climate dialogue and reaching out to their senators to join the conversations. Through this nationwide effort, we hope to […]
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When will we stop paying the hidden fossil fuel tax?
Last week, the nation suffered from major sticker shock when we learned that our use of fossil fuels comes with a hidden price tag of $120 billion per year. Thanks to the results of the National Research Council’s report on energy and the environment, some of the extra costs of dirty energy were exposed. (Full […]
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The most frightening story this Halloween is … pumpkintop removal
I want to draw attention to one of the gravest — but least publicized — environmental crimes of our times. It is one of brutal violence, utter waste, and total disregard for the planet’s resources. Millions of unwitting Americans are complicit in the destruction each year, as evidenced by the burning lights spread across the […]
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The True Impact of Coal Mining
We learned with sadness this week that blasting has begun on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, site of a long battle between Massey Energy and local residents who want the mountain to be a site for 200 wind turbines instead of mountaintop removal coal mining. Massey has ignored these pleas, despite research showing that […]
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Coal River Mountain protests spread across the nation
Mountaintop removal funeral procession at EPA in D.C.Photo courtesy Chris Eichler of RAN Field Photography via Flickr The Coalfield Uprising is spreading across the nation. As millions of pounds of explosions rip across their mountain communities, including the clean energy landmark of Coal River Mountain, scores of residents from the Appalachian coalfields have joined with […]
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Washington governor isn’t falling for big geoengineering fixes
There is no silver bullet. There is only golden buckshot. –Washington Governor Christine Gregoire on her all-hands-on-deck cleantech philosophy, speaking at the Cleantech Open‘s Pacific Northwest Regional Awards Gala Oct. 29. She was quoting Blue Marble Energy CEO Kelly Ogilvie.
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The long and wind-powered road
The Danes have an enduring relationship with wind. This is symbolized by the big, honking wind turbine that looms like a bird of prey over the parking lot outside the Bella Center, the venue for the U.N. Climate Change Conference Denmark is hosting in December. It was a Dane, physicist H.C. Oersted, who discovered electrical […]
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2009 polar melt season: The stats are in
The 2009 ice melt season has just been completed at the northern polar cap, and observations confirm that the decay of the arctic ocean ice cover is continuing a steady decline.
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Energy Trust and the Big Hope
If you’re like me, and spend a lot of the day drinking coffee and getting increasingly paranoid with the creeping suspicion that solving climate may not be possible, it’s good when you find glimmers of hope in the wreckage. One of those glimmers (actually more like a tractor beam) is called Energy Trust, an organization […]
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Disappearing beaches in Gambia
Hotel managers in Gambia say without the beach the tourists will not come. But the beach in front of the country’s two landmark hotels is disappearing pretty fast. It is a very serious state of affairs for a country that derives a major percentage of its income from tourism. Beach erosion is clearly visible at […]
