This just in: the North Carolina state legislature may take the destructive and despicable practice of mountaintop removal coal mining head-on by banning the use of coal obtained from [...]
This just in: the North Carolina state legislature may take the destructive and despicable practice of mountaintop removal coal mining head-on by banning the use of coal obtained from [...]
One of the nation’s largest developers is gobbling up our precious open spaces and spitting them back out in drastically altered pieces. Unfortunately, the McMansions Toll Brothers is planting on former farmland throughout Bucks County, Pennsylvania will only yield poor attempts to satisfy families' hunger [...]
Presidential contender John McCain delivered a major speech today outlining his climate change policy from Portland, Oregon. Stumping from Stumptown (a Portland nickname harkening to it's timber industry past), Senator McCain detailed his plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, calling climate change a "test of [...]
Posted by David J. Petersen. Cross-posted from the Sustainability Law Blog.
Hillary Clinton and John McCain support seriously Energy Dumb gas tax holiday
[This is a guest post from "Energy Smart" blogger, A. Siegel. See http://EnergySmart.wordpress.com and http://a-siegel.dailykos.com for more of Siegel's excellent work.]
The Ohio state Senate unanimously passed legislation setting strong new renewable energy and energy efficiency standards last week, sending the bill on to Governor Ted Strickland for signature. Sub. Senate Bill 221 establishes a 12.5% by 2025 renewable energy standard (RES), making the Buckeye State [...]
Econ 101 taught us increased supply = lower prices. That's the main argument for new liquefied natural gas import terminals. Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal warns things are a bit more complicated than that and we shouldn't bet on LNG to reduce North American natural gas [...]
Cross-posted from SustainabilityLawBlog.com:
On Earth Day, we celebrate our unique blue planet and look for ways to advance a sustainable future. So this Earth Day, let's Act Blue and do something that can have a lasting and significant impact: support Energy Smart and Earth Friendly candidates for [...]
ABEC stands for Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, a [...]
A new fault line has emerged in the climate movement amidst a firestorm of debate over the past week. On one side is a group of old-guard and well-known environmentalists, and on the other is a newly forming alliance of climate and energy scientists who are challenging traditional beliefs held [...]
New and better ways of doing things should be a key element of the climate movement. We’re trying to find better ways to generate energy and conserve energy. We’re also trying to find new and better ways to engage people in creating those solutions. Even if you [...]
Cross posted from The Understory, official blog of Rainforest Action Network and Itsgettinghotinhere.org.
In an interview on West Virginia Public Radio this morning, Hillary Clinton revealed some pretty profound ignorance about the true costs of coal and especially about the destruction mountain top coal mining is wrecking on both communities and ecosystems in Appalachia. Give it [...]
With the science of climate change pretty solidly unimpeachable at this point, the rag tag camp of climate change deniers, detractors, doomsayers and other flat-earthers have a new tactic these days: talk up the supposedly disastrous economic consequences of regulating carbon. 
By Morgan Goodwin, Jesse Jenkins and Juliana Williams
Got a big idea you’ve wanted to pursue to advance the clean energy movement? Breakthrough Generation, the youth initiative of the Breakthrough Institute, is awarding ten $5,000 Fellowships to the country’s top young organizers and thinkers.
Twelve of America's largest environmental groups gathered with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, on Capitol Hill this morning to show America that they are united to push hard for global warming legislation during this session of the 110th Congress.
Ed Markey and Henry Waxman are no Fossil Fools! The two Chairmen and Congressional Climate Champs released a new bill yesterday calling for a moratorium on any new coal plants that do not capture and sequester their greenhouse gas emissions. 
Al Gore, the erstwhile trumpeter of inconvenient truths and dire warnings of climate catastrophe has fallen under attack by the climate deniers and flat earth-ers of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
It seems that a scientific study emerges nearly every month highlighting the grave threats posed by global warming, and the ever-increasing need to reduce global warming pollution as quickly as possible. While federal response can be slow going, and has hardly ever been known [...]
Both Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton have solid energy plans that, if implemented, would take America into a cleaner energy future. On energy and climate, like on so many other issues, both remaining Democratic contenders for the White House followed John Edwards' early example and developed [...]
Last month while lobbying our Washington state legislators for climate change solutions, a legislative aid asked me, “Well, do you want climate change action or [...]
In another big victory in the fight against the coal rush, the feds apparently suspended a major loan program that provided rural electric cooperatives with subsidized loans to construct new coal-fired power plants. An official with the US Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities [...]
Happy Friday! Oil hit record-prices today: $103.05 per barrel. Bully for us...
The coal industry, running scared from the increasingly powerful No Coal movement, is fighting back by trying to buy the 2008 elections. 
Breakthrough Generation — the new youth initiative of Ted Nordhaus & Michael Shellenberger’s think tank, The Breakthrough Institute — is now recruiting for a Fellowship Program that will select up to ten of the country’s top young organizers and thinkers to develop a vision and strategy [...]
Norman Foster's utopia is designed for the Masdar Initiative in Abu Dhabi to be the "world's first zero-carbon and zero-waste city." 
Midwest oil refineries are gobbling up more and more crude oil from Canadian tar sands and are set to belch out up to 40 percent more greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade. 
The Senate stimulus package, which would have given a much needed boost to green technology through production tax credits, failed to pass a Senate filibuster vote last night, with one no-show. Who was the no show? Sens. Obama and Hillary -- exhasuted from their [...]
The Earth's rock layers tell us stories about our natural history; most recently the layers tell us stories of undeniable, human-induced global environmental change. This month, the Geologic Society of America (GSA) publication GSA Today features an article authored by a sizable group of geoscientists [...]
Tides Foundation, Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption and Free Range Studios present a short film from Annie Leonard called "Story of Stuff."So, big news on Wall Street today regarding coal and our climate. Three of the largest investment banks (Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan Chase) announced the formation of the “Carbon Principles” - a set of guidelines the banks will follow when lending money to carbon-intensive projects, such [...]
Word from our friends at Green For All is Senator Bernie Sanders is going to offer an amendment on the floor tomorrow to the economic stimulus package, asking for them to add in full funding of the Green Jobs Act. This Green Jobs Act was included in [...]
You’re thinking, “If only we could get Congress to actually pass some of these policies…” We won’t stop until they do! So far Focus the Nation teams have invited more than 150 members of Congress to participate in dialogs on global warming solutions. 30 Congressional offices [...]
[Guest post by Billy Parish]
When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated forty years ago in Memphis, he was calling for a campaign that would unite the poor and working classes of all races behind a shared economic future. Today, with ever increasing income gaps, rising oil prices, rapid climate [...]
The polar bear was once the world’s most formidable predator. It now lies on the brink of extinction due to global warming and habitat loss. The bear and its habitat stand to gain some protections under the Endangered Species Act this year, and the U.S. Fish [...]
Unfortunately, the political status [...]
It's finally happened: $100-per-barrel oil is no longer some looming specter, just a dark possibility used by Peak Oilers to frighten little chillun's into driving less. 
The Oregon League of Conservation Voters (OLCV) polled it's subscribers on the top five environmental victories of 2007 for Oregon. The list includes: 
That's what it must have said on the holiday card delivered today by the White House to ExxonMobil executives along with a nice, fat, $10.3 billion check.
It's been a long frustrating week of political shenanigans in Washington D.C...
The weakened energy bill ultimately passed last week and signed into law by President Bush today is the gift that keeps on giving this holiday season.
Many of us agree that it is both, but the positive message of future opportunities is often drowned out by messaging that is fear [...]
This Monday Congress agreed to guarantee loans for up to 80% of construction costs for new nuclear reactors. The legislation directs the Department of Energy to provide $20.5b for nuclear energy, $10b for renewables and $8b for “clean-coal” technology. Numbers don’t lie. Only $10b of almost [...]
The Democratic Majority quickly abandoned any effort (if there ever even was a plan to exert force?) to keep the $13.5 billion renewable energy tax package in the final Energy Bill.
The tax package would have given greatly needed tax breaks to emerging clean energy [...]
As predicted, the Senate took its second stab at the Energy Bill this morning; the vote was expected to be very close with 60 votes needed to end the cloture vote and move the Energy Bill forward. The Energy Bill currently includes the first overhaul [...]
Bits and pieces of information are coming in today indicating that the Senate is gearing up to take a second stab at passing an energy bill later this week.
Breakthrough Generation Spring 2008 Conference
After long hours of negotiations that have stretched long into the night for the past week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to have cobbled together a deal that will send a strong energy bill out of the House, likely Thursday.
1Sky is based on three pillars: create 5 million new Green Jobs, start a firm Moratorium on New Coal, and reduce emissions to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050. Focus the Nation’s Choose Your Future Vote in January will [...]
Great news from Washington state!
Today, Google announced it's newest initiative: RE<C.The buzz in Congress about Focus the Nation has representatives calling our Civic Engagement Director asking “Where is my invitation?” Want to know what your rep has to say about global warming? Here’s how: The Green Democracy model is providing a day of carbon-neutral DC-to-district engagement on Global [...]
On Tuesday, the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat announced (also here) that although emissions from 40 industrialized countries almost reached an all time high in 2005,
Taken together, the countries that signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol are projected to achieve reductions on the order of 11 per [...]
Clicking each icon brings up lots of information on [...]
Riding your bike to work and changing your light bulbs may make you feel like you’re a part of the solution, but you’re not really making a difference. No matter how many of us stop driving gas guzzlers, swap out our incandescents and eat local, [...]
Don't forget to the check out the little cartoon in the lower-right-hand corner of each [...]
From ItsGettingHotInHere.org, by Juliana Williams:
Let’s all thank the 9th Circuit court for stating the obvious. Thursday a three judge panel ruled that 23.5 mpg is not a high enough fuel economy standard for light trucks and SUVs. Why not? The court finally stated explicitly that standards must take greenhouse [...]
As Edward Abbey once said, “There is no lack of water in the Mojave Desert unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.”
The thousands of students and youth at Power Shift 2007 must have made an impression on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi, who attended the massive Saturday night festivities at Power Shift and delivered a presentation to a crowd hungry for action from Congressional [...]
"With the Millennials set to be the largest demographic bloc in America history, it might be time for Washington to listen" to them when it comes to Climate Change, says Time Magazine in an article published online last week.Al Gore’s Nobel Prize was a momentous event we should all applaud. Now it is time to move on and get smart about the climate movement’s next steps. First, we should deal with some of our [...]