Climate Technology
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What should Microsoft do on climate?
Caught up today with Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s smartie-pants green dude, who elaborated on CEO Steve Ballmer’s TOP-SECRET memo to his 90K employees laying out the company’s ambitions on energy and climate change. The memo contains juicy nuggets like: “Our goal is to reduce our carbon emissions per unit of revenue by at least 30 percent […]
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California utility bets on space-based solar power
A conceptual image of what a space-based solar power plant would look like. The image was commissioned by the National Space SocietyMafic Studios, Inc. Space… the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of PG&E. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new technologies, to seek out new sources of renewable energy and new revenues, to boldly […]
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Every job can be green, part two
This is part two of my chapter, “Green jobs in a sustainable economy”, published recently in the book “Mandate for Change”. You can also read part one, in which I discuss the first three ways in which to create an environmentally sustainable economy. Fourth, in the United States today, about two-thirds of our electricity and […]
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Ads call for green jobs to revitalize steel towns
Environmental Defense Action Fund, United Steelworkers, and the Blue Green Alliance unveiled new television ads this week in support of a cap on carbon and a comprehensive green energy and jobs bill. The ads focus on the disappearance of steel-industry jobs from Braddock, Pa., and the mayor’s hope that new green jobs will replace them. […]
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Why Obama’s bank bailout could be bad for the environment
Back to the future?Photo: Julep67The Obama administration’s plan for reviving the banks is predicated on the idea that the “toxic assets” weighing down balance sheets aren’t really all that toxic at all; that the banks, in other words, aren’t actually insolvent, but just the victims of temporary investor panic. If that logic proves true, then […]
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PG&E signs first-of-a-kind space solar power deal
Not many people I know think space solar is a low-cost, scalable solution. Certainly it is worth pursuing any genuine low-carbon baseload power source if it can be practical and scalable — and affordable, which I would put at $0.15 a kilowatt hour or less for. The problem with space solar is that, like hydrogen […]
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Why the CDM should matter to the United States
A hot-blooded Spanish creature like me can get into an argument relatively easily, and I’m not afraid to argue strongly about what I know and/or believe. Can you picture Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona when she argues with Javier Bardem? Yep, that’s me! In the last four months here in the United States, I […]
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Let millionaires pay to solve our twin environmental and economic crises
Economic and environmental problems are two consequences of one mistake, a mistake every farmer used to know the folly of: eating our seed corn
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Adventures in the FUD-osphere
Don’t FUD it upImage: psdFDR must have been talking about the Internet when he famously said that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Everywhere you turn there is another study raising some new hazard and questioning some baseline assumption about how our society lives, eats or fuels itself. And then in short order, […]
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America’s first solar city, from a former NFL player
An architect’s rendering of Babcock Ranch, the solar-powered city planned east of Fort Myers.Kitson and PartnersFlorida developer and former NFL lineman Syd Kitson sent out a coy press release Wednesday promising the biggest news in the history of press releases, to be revealed Thursday. And in truth … it’s sort of a big deal. The […]
