Climate Energy

After hundreds of earthquakes, Arkansas shuts down fracking disposal wells

Here's a novel idea: if your local extraction industry is causing hundreds of earthquakes, make them stop doing whatever it was that was causing the earthquakes.

That's exactly what the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission did yesterday, when its members voted to shut down a fracking fluid disposal well and ban the drilling of new ones. The Associated Press explains:

Crazy ideas for next-gen wind turbines

Is there any image that represents a renewable energy future better than a stately white wind turbine turning on a hillside? Well, don't get too used to it! Researchers are coming up with all sorts of crazy ideas to improve on the current turbine model, the Los Angeles Times’ Tiffany Hsu reports. Here’s what future wind turbines will look like:

The $50,000 playhouse that oil built

Ever wonder what oil executives do with all the money they make from wrecking the planet? Well, take a tour with me through the playhouse that oil exec John Schiller ($7.7 million in compensation in 2010, including a $2.6 million bonus) had built for his 4-year-old. That's an artist's conception above, not the actual blueprint, but all the features -- air conditioning, running water, fireplace, 32-inch flat-screen TV -- are for real. (The New York Times has pictures, too.)

Is this the greenest college campus ever?

California's Butte College has a 928-acre wildlife refuge. It promotes ride shares. It uses goats for landscaping, and worms for composting. It has LEED-certifiable buildings. And now it's going off the grid -- the first college in the country, the school claims, to be energy independent.

Industry threatens university over anti-coal sculpture

Chris Drury, a British artist, created this sculpture, entitled Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around, to express the idea that (JUST POSSIBLY) Wyoming's coal industry and its contributions to climate change had something to do with the explosion of pine beetles in the state. (Warmer winters have allowed them to thrive.)

The sculpture happens to be installed at the University of Wyoming, which receives just a tiiiiiny bit of funding from the coal industry, like only a couple million dollars.

Tennessee is getting 1,000 tons of nuclear waste from Germany

Oak Ridge, Tenn., a city with a long history of living alongside nuclear industries, will be processing nuclear waste from Germany. They’ll be taking on almost 1,000 tons of material, and the shipments could start coming this year. NPR reports:

How to power homes with 100% clean and increasingly local power

Marin Clean Energy in California leads the way in clean, local energy with its community choice aggregation model.

Critical List: Financial assistance for cooling costs down; Atlanta's trees are dying

Stuck in a heat wave? Can't afford A/C? Too bad: Groups that dole out government assistance for cooling have had their funding cut and have turned away up to 80 percent of applicants.

Today's the first anniversary of the climate bill's death.

Atlanta loves trees! It charges $1,000 to chop one down. But drought, storms, invasive species, and natural causes get to kill trees for free, and they’re are all contributing to a large-scale die-off.

Judge: Tar-sands equipment can't travel on Montanan backroads

A group of Montanans, Idahoans, Oregonians, and Washingtonians struck a blow against ExxonMobil and its push to extract carbon-soaked oil from Canada's tar sands this week. The Northwesterns weren't upset about the environmental impact of the tar sands, exactly, but they were upset that an Exxon subsidiary wanted to haul oversized loads of oil-extraction equipment from the Port of Vancouver, Wash., over small winding highways in environmentally valuable areas, to the Canadian border.

They asked a judge to stop the company from using those roads. And on Tuesday, he did.

Blockbuster news for the anti-coal movement: Bloomberg is all in

Michael Bloomberg is putting $50 million toward the anti-coal movement. That, needless to say, is a big deal.