Climate & Energy

DOE and EPA Agree to Make a Brighter Energy Star

Last week the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the Energy Star program. Who runs Energy Star, the extremely successful program for promoting efficient appliances, equipment, and buildings, and how they run it has been a point of tension between the agencies that are […]

Lane Burt Climate & Energy

Mountaintop Removal Hearings Get Tense

This week has seen some very tense and passionate hearings on mountaintop removal coal mining permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Local residents who support clean energy say they have been verbally and physically threatened at the West Virginia and Kentucky hearings so far. Here’s a video of the Charleston, WV, hearings, where […]

Bruce Nilles Climate & Energy

A Savage way to save the world

Blogging won”t save the world, nor will rowing across the ocean. But join Roz Savage and thousands of others on Oct. 24 for 350.org’s climate action day!Courtesy Roz SavageA million keyboards were singing on Wednesday as bloggers across the Internet drummed up support for action on climate change. The cynical move here would be to […]

Russ Walker Climate & Energy

The genesis of the climate change stalemate

This article by Michael Lewyn is part of a collaboration with Planetizen, the web’s leading resource for the urban planning, design, and development community. Some of my acquaintances believe that climate change may end human life (or at least civilization) and that the only way to save humanity is to massively reduce economic growth and […]

Planetizen Climate & Energy

From Oslo to Copenhagen: Earning the Peace Prize

Could Barack Obama’s controversial Nobel Prize help bring about an effective global agreement to tackle climate change? Could the American president, by heading straight to Denmark after collecting his prize, actually demonstrate why he was the right pick for the honor within days of delivering his laureate address? It’s just a hop, skip and a […]

Geoffrey Lean Climate & Energy

Dispassion as the world ends: The absent heart of the great climate affair

Photo: Adam D. SacksIn “The Fallacy of Climate Activism,” I suggest that we as climate activists are not telling the unadulterated truth — which seems to worsen daily — to the public. This is one critically important reason we’re making so little progress in changing behavior and politics commensurate with the drastic acceleration of global […]

Adam Sacks Climate & Energy

Should the Department of Justice investigate Big Coal bedlam?

UPDATE: Every American — including the Army Corps of Engineers — must watch this powerful new 20-minute film by Chad Stevens on the real costs and consequences of mountaintop removal mining: Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining. Now, the good news: on behalf of their children’s future, coalfield residents and miners calmly came […]

Jeff Biggers Climate & Energy

The risky plan to dump coal ash in an old Tennessee mine

Since a dam burst at its Kingston coal-fired power plant last December and dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge into a nearby community and river, the federal Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has decided to change the way it stores its coal waste, transitioning from wet landfills like the one that […]

Sue Sturgis Climate & Energy

Bring seeds to the coalfields: Vote for this clean energy project

Want to take on Big Coal with a couple clicks on your keyboard? A fantastic new project, SEEDS — Sustainable Energy and Economic Diversification program — is taking root in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia, at ground zero in the mountaintop removal mining and coalfield uprising, and it needs your Grist-reading help: If […]