Climate Energy

Obama's jobs council hearts environmental destruction

The Fortune 500 CEOs who make up the president's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness are all about building Keystone XL, reinstating deepwater drilling in the Gulf, and fracking up West Virginia. The idea is that these projects will create jobs and economic growth, at least until there's a disaster of some sort that economically depresses […]

Where did Obama's mojo go?

Obama's fund-raising emails sound a little pathetic. Nixing the Keystone XL pipeline could be his last chance to prove himself to progressive voters.

Oil spill is New Zealand’s worst-ever environmental disaster at sea

It's bad when a tanker strikes a reef. It's worse when that tanker is carrying oil that starts tarring some of your country's nicest beaches. It's even worse when bad weather makes more oil leak from that tanker.

That's the series of increasingly problematic events that's been unfolding off the New Zealand coast, and the country's government is now calling it the worst maritime environmental disaster they've ever dealt with. The weather is keeping response crews from doing their thing, and birds and seals are both at risk. Plus, in addition to oil, the tanker was carrying smaller quantities of materials like ferrosilicon, which have the potential to wreak havoc in their own special way.

Coal ash regulation would create 28,000 jobs

The pro-pollution lobby loves to argue that environmental regulations destroy jobs. A report on coal ash regulation shows the opposite is true.

Solar PV rapidly becoming the cheapest option to generate electricity

Solar's not getting much love these days. But it could become very cheap, and we can leverage it for a rapid switch to global renewable energy.

What the Nobel Prize tells us about oil

The Nobel Prize in economics was awarded for work on cause and effect, highlighting the difficulty of understanding how oil prices affect the economy.

Local solar could power the Mountain West right now, all of America in 2026

If the U.S. had kept pace with German solar installation, we'd be on our way to being a 100 percent solar-powered nation.

Keystone-pipeline protestors link their movement to Occupy Wall Street

In keeping with the Occupy Wall Street movement, activists in Washington, D.C., on Friday protested the Keystone XL pipeline outside the State Department.

Look! Up in the sky! It's an inflatable wind turbine!

In the department of cool inventions you'll probably never use, the inventor of the Segway has come up with an idea for an inflatable wind turbine.

Its main advantage is that it's mobile: imagine parking your EV and sending your inflatable wind turbine up into the sky to charge it while you're at work. It could be moved to take advantage of the best winds as they shift, and, more to the point, It could also be mounted on top of a building or on the side of the road in order to double as a billboard.
 

Pipeline? We don't need no stinkin' pipeline

Arguments against the tar-sands pipeline focus on the environmental dangers it poses. The more fundamental question is: do we really need that oil?