Get Energy Smart! NOW!

One shouldn’t pretend that flying half way around the world to stay in an ‘eco-resort’ somehow merits a Gold Star for heroic climate mitigation action as guest poster Ban Nock explores

Green Travel … isn’t.
It is hard to think of any form of travel that isn’t harmful to the atmosphere, our ecosystem, and even the [...]

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Reminiscent a bit of Caroling Coal, my in-box this morning was deluged with Peabody Energy press releases (see full material after the fold) and other announcements of a new public relations campaign:  Coal Cares. 
Evidently stung by the medical community’s highlighting of the linkages between the burning of coal (mainly for electricity) and health problems in America’s [...]

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Construction and use of buildings account for a major share of global warming emissions. Depending on how one calculates, allocating roughly 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to this built infrastructure is roughly correct.  Heating … cooling … lighting … building materials … etc, it all adds up (and up … and up). [...]

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When it comes to the necessity of facing down pollution in the nation’s electricity system and other major polluting industries, it is hard to read recent Obama Administration action as anything other than a strong statement to leading environmental organizations:
Stay out of our way, we don’t need your help … we don’t need it.
With monumental [...]

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Sadly, one of the refrains that we hear (ad nauseum) is that regulation is somehow harmful for the economy, that government action (on any front) would strangle business activity.  In the public debate, the accurate and truthful case is not made frequently enough about how government regulation actually strengthens our economy and boosts our economic [...]

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Senator Lisa Murkowski has been conniving with fossil-fuel lobbyists for a long time, seeking out paths to strip the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA).
Alaska has been called the poster state for global warming. Winter temperatures have already risen 6 degrees. Sea ice that protects [...]

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The world is at 390 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 and 430+ CO2 equivalent. The IPCC has concluded, in what might actually be an optimistic assessment, that we can limit temperature growth to 2 degrees if we cap CO2 levels at 450 ppm. That is, limiting to 450 ppm would give us [...]

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The news in France: a 14 Euro (about $19.90 at current exchange rates) tax per ton of carbon to go into effect in 2010. While discussion of a carbon tax has been an item of debate within French society, Prime Minister Fillon’s announcement of the actual amount and the parameters of the coming have [...]

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A guest post from mwmwm … Want to talk about “clean coal“?

The USGS released a recently released an underreported report  that is quite stunning in its implications.
The major findings from USGS Mercury in Stream Ecosystem studies of 291 stream systems across the US are that methymercury (the form easiest for aquatic life to acquire and [...]

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The Waxman-Markety American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) targets for renewable energy and climate emissions reductions are, to put it simply, far from what they should be. And, let’s put aside “should be”, they are far weaker than they could be.
Let’s stick with 2020 targets for a moment. The bill, as passed by the House, [...]

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