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ScamWow! Greenpeace has the perfect solution for scrubbing BP’s oily image
Mocking the scam that is the BP cleanup, Greenpeace today released the “ScamWow!” infomercial targeting BP and other oil companies who need a quick solution whenever pesky ecological devastation results from their irresponsible, risky drilling practices. Spoofing the original late night cable sensation, the ScamWow! info-mock-cial demonstrates how the simple budget picker-upper’s cleaning powers can […]
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Solar projects continue to shine despite dark economic times
Three years into a decade-long project to install 3,000 megawatts of photovoltaic arrays, California is almost halfway to its goal.Photo: Flickr via Jason Levine DesignAs the Great Recession drags on in California — unemployment rate: 12.4 percent, state government in a state of collapse — the solar boom continues. The Golden State’s decade-long program to […]
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Seven reasons BP would like to forget last weekend
It’s been 81 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank in the Gulf.Photo: U.S. Coast GuardIt should have been a good weekend for BP. Its latest plan to staunch the geyser — lowering a tighter cap over the spewing pipe — is ahead of schedule, and its two relief wells, which could stop […]
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Are kickbacks from Kellogg and others driving school-food purchasing?
D.C. Public Schools in the last two years have taken in more than $1 million in corporate rebates — referred to by some as “kickbacks” — paid by giant food manufacturers as an inducement to place their brands on kids’ cafeteria trays at school. Documents I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that […]
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Weighing safety of weed killer in drinking water, EPA relies heavily on industry-backed studies
Illustration by Lagan Sebert, Huffington Post Investigative Fund, EPA Image by Harry Hanbury, Crop Duster image courtesy Jenni Jone via FlickrCross-posted from the Huffington Post Investigative Fund Companies with a financial interest in a weed-killer sometimes found in drinking water paid for thousands of studies federal regulators are using to assess the herbicide’s health risks, […]
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California’s photovoltaic push
Amid the hullabaloo over government-chartered mortgage giants derailing the green financing program known as Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, the march toward distributed generation of renewable energy — that is, generating electricity from decentralized sources such as rooftop solar panels or backyard wind turbines — continues. Case in point: The Sacramento Municipal Utility District […]
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Sure it’s hot, but here are six reasons not to hate the sun
Spend a week on the sticky East Coast and it’s easy to go off on the sun. But stay cool. If we have any hope of beating our oil addiction, we need that Great Heat Machine in the Sky. Just last weekend, President Obama committed to $2 billion in loans to solar energy companies, including […]
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Treasury Department hits PACE homeowners
On Tuesday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency effectively shut down an innovative green financing program called Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, by restricting the ability of homeowners to take out loans to install solar panels and make other energy efficiency improvements. Now the United States Treasury Department has piled on. A new Treasury directive […]
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Holiday weekend brings good news — and bad — for clean energy
The Fourth of July isn’t quite Earth Day but it’s becoming a favored holiday for companies and policymakers to declare energy independence, as was the case this past weekend. Cypress Semiconductor, kicked things off when T.J. Rodgers, the company’s chief executive, declared at a press conference that the Silicon Valley chipmaker would go completely off […]
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BP offshore oil board game: Seemed like a fun idea at the time?
Back in the ’70s, BP decided to market a family board game by the name of “Offshore Oil Strike,” boasting the “thrills of drilling” as well as the “hazards and rewards.” I mean, Monopoly worked out pretty well for the Wall Street tycoons even in the midst of the Great Depression, right? On the other […]
