Climate Climate & Energy
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Persistence stops a train — and global warming slowed
A massive new rail line planned to move millions of tons of low-grade coal from northeastern Wyoming to the Midwest has been stopped. For more than nine years Sierra Club and our allies have been battling plans by Dakota Minnesota & Eastern Railroad Corp. (DM&E) to build this new coal line, and late yesterday DM&E […]
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California proposes new program for 1 GW of renewables
The California Public Utilities Commission issued a new proposal today designed to significantly increase the amount of solar energy installed in the state. It is kind of like a feed-in tariff, but different. Call it a feed-in tariff v2.0. The proposed program would require utilities to purchase electricity from mid-size solar and other renewable energy […]
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The Climate Post: A climate for monkey business
First Things First: The American “century” began 150 years ago today, when a salt water drill slipped into a crevice 69 feet below the surface, essentially striking oil for “Colonel” Edward Drake and the backers of his unlikely expedition. The find made Titusville, Penn., the first global capital of the oil industry. After Drake & […]
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Thoreau, Walden and civil disobedience in the age of climate change
On a frigid January night some years ago, a friend and I snuck into a Massachusetts state preserve, stripped naked, and charged into Walden Pond. For a few exhilarating, painful moments we swam, and I imagined some hard-to-name kinship with the pond’s most famous neighbor, the 19th century eccentric Henry David Thoreau. It was a […]
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Sen. Tom Coburn has scientific document reading training
“I am not the smartest man in the world, but I have been trained to read scientific documents, and [anthropogenic climate change] is malarkey.” — Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who also explained why Jesus would oppose a public option in health care reform
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Tree-sitters do environmental regulators’ job
In a stunning blow to mountaintop removal blasting operations in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia this morning, two fearless protesters scaled massive trees and unfurled banners from their 80-foot-high platforms. Within 300 feet of the Massey Energy’s Edwight mountaintop removal blasting site, above Pettry Bottom and Peachtree in Raleigh County, W. Va., the […]
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Water must be on the table at Copenhagen talks
The participants of the 2009 World Water Week in Stockholm last Friday unanimously said that water must be included in the COP-15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December. At various sessions throughout the Week, a number of organizations and officials have articulated the reasons why water needs to be an integral part of the negotiation […]
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Portland’s newest high-rise has wind turbines on the roof
The cermonial urban-turbine installation.indigo12west.comTwo weeks ago in Portland, Oregon, a new 23-story building added something you don’t usually see in an urban setting: a series of four Skystream wind turbines, with a total capacity of 9.6kW. There are several reasons why wind turbines are a rarity atop highrises — beyond the obvious one: our power […]
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What does it mean for a car to get 230 miles per gallon?
GM has created a bit of buzz around its claim that the Chevy Volt gets 230 miles to the gallon in city driving. From the internet a great chorus has replied: “This number doesn’t make any sense!†And it doesn’t.
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The clock has started ticking on mountaintop removal mining permits
This blog post co-written by Bruce Nilles and Mary Anne Hitt, Director and Deputy Director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. We’ve just learned that the clock has started ticking on more than 80 new mountaintop removal coal mining permits in Appalachia. We are told that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may start approving these […]
