Climate Energy
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Want people to get on board with a shift to clean energy? Shield them from economic insecurity
Some risks are more immediate than others.Photo: A SynYesterday I ran across a pair of posts that got me thinking about risk and resilience. (Confession: Almost everything these days makes me think about risk and resilience.) First there’s this extremely smart piece from economist Jason Scorse. It makes an argument that I wish had gotten […]
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Chernobyl, 25 years later
Today is the 25th anniversary of the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Here's part one of a spooky-as-hell film showing scientists venturing inside the plant's cement sarcophagus, which keeps its nuclear material contained (for now). A few other things to look at today: What's the ecology of Chernobyl today? Some wildlife has returned, but […]
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Boehner supports cutting oil subsidies for five whole minutes
Apparently the whole "we support handing out bags full of money to the rich because we care about the little guy" act is harder to keep up than we'd realized. Put John Boehner under a little pressure about oil company subsidies and he buckles like a belt. ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl got the speaker […]
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Washington is lying to you about the cause of high gas prices
When it comes to the causes of high prices for gasoline, Washington is reaching truly epic levels of mendacity. Last Thursday, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) aimed to "set the record straight on America's oil" in a Washington Post op-ed that was completely jam-packed with BS. Murkowski, along with countless other congresscritters on both sides of […]
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Biofuel from pond scum could replace 17 percent of imported oil
Good news: Growing algae for biofuel could allow us to replace almost half our oil imports! Bad news: It would take a ginormous amount of water and land. Better news: Even if we plan the algae farming in a water-conscious, environmentally responsible way, we can still replace 17 percent of imported oil with biofuel. That's […]
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Distributed solar approaches grid parity
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Grid parity is an approaching target for distributed solar power, and can be helped along with smarter electricity pricing policy. Consider a residential solar photovoltaic (PV) system installed in Los Angeles. A local buying group negotiated […]
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Yesterday’s fracking blowout: What happened, and will it happen again?
Yesterday, on the one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill, a natural gas well in Bradford County, Pennsylvania — perhaps suffering from an overload of irony — ruptured and leaked "thousands and thousands of gallons" of fracking fluid over the surrounding farmland and into a nearby creek. Officials say no gas was released, but local […]
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‘BP hasn’t made people whole’
The Gulf oil disaster largely disappeared from the headlines last August, after the well was finally capped and the federal government declared that most of the oil was “gone.” For Gulf coast residents, though, the nightmare was just beginning. A year later, business hasn’t come back for many in fishing and tourism, and the compensation […]
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Major fracking spill happening now in Pennsylvania
We have the makings of an environmental disaster in northern Pennsylvania at the moment. According to local Pennsylvania television station WNEP, a natural-gas well blew out in the middle of the night while crews were engaged in “fracking” activities: Bradford County’s director of public safety said a Chesapeake well went out of control late Tuesday […]
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Germans happily pay more for clean energy. Why don’t Americans?
In the U.S., any policy that raises taxes on anyone or causes anyone to pay more for anything — at least in a way that’s visible or traceable — has become verboten. It’s axiomatic in American politics that you can’t do it. The populace will revolt, right-wingers will demagogue you, you’ll be driven from office. […]
