Climate Climate & Energy
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Damning look at Canada’s tar sands tops enviro journalism awards
Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk won the top prize from the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual reporting awards for his investigation of oil extraction in the tar sands of northern Alberta. Nikiforuk’s book — Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent — examines the high social and environmental costs of the process of […]
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Does CEQ-EPA regulatory banter abet historicide?
Mired in the acrobatics of regulatory doublespeak, the Obama administration’s increasing oversight of the unbearable daily toll on Appalachian coalfield residents from mountaintop removal begs the question: Are Obama’s well-meaning but irresolute environmental administrators abetting the crimes of human rights violations and historicide? Whether they are unaware of decades of regulatory circumvention by Big Coal […]
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Solar Power, Yes We Did! (& Will!)
The outlook for all three categories of solar power in the United States is bright, according to a new study by the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC). The IREC reports that photovoltaic (PV) capacity grew by 63 percent in 2008 alone. The study’s author, Larry Sherwood, credits the federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for a […]
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The Climate Post: Smalls steps and giant leaps
First Things First: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited India last weekend to inch forward collaboration on regional security, global business, nuclear power, and climate change. U.S. papers played up the real-time meltdown between Clinton and Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. The two appeared before cameras on a trip to a new, energy-efficient office building […]
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Memo to Post: If George Will quotes a lie, it’s still a lie
When New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called upon “young Americans” to “get a million people on the Washington Mall calling for a price on carbon,” another columnist, Mark Steyn, responded: “If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you’re graduating high school, there has been no global […]
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“Realistic” first-generation CCS costs a whopping $150 per ton of CO2 — 20 cents per kWh!
Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has published a blockbuster study, “Realistic Costs of Carbon Capture.” The paper concludes that First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) carbon capture and storage plants are going to be much more expensive than most people realize: 1. The costs of carbon abatement on a 2008 basis for FOAK IGCC plants are […]
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Money can’t buy YOU love — but it can buy the fossil fuel industry the GOP loves
Oil companies, electric utilities and the coal industry have poured more than $250,000 this year into the coffers of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s House fundraising arm that has played a lead role in attacking Democrats who supported climate legislation. All told, political action committees for various fossil fuel industries have given at […]
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Congress reverses Chu’s decision, flushes $100 million down the toilet pursuing hydrogen cars
Honda’s FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel cell car: yours for only $100,000!There are only three sure things in life — death, taxes, and you’re never going to buy a hydrogen fuel cell car. Congress should stop wasting your money pursuing Bush’s phony dream. The fundamental problem with hydrogen as a transport fuel is one that no […]
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Nobelist Krugman: Fear of carbon markets and speculation is “99% wrong and bad for the planet”
There are many obstacles to taking action on climate change. Most of those obstacles have deep roots: there are powerful interest groups that don’t want market prices to reflect true costs, and there are ideologues — financially supported by these interest groups — who don’t want to admit that sometimes the government has to intervene. […]
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Recipe for green jobs
In this economy, every state wants jobs. Green jobs are popular, but frankly, they’ll take them in any color. A great way to attract renewable energy jobs to a state is to—and this should be obvious—establish a local market. If a state provides incentives for a local solar market, for example, you get on the […]
