Get Energy Smart! NOW!

Later today, President Barack Obama will give a speech at Georgetown University focused on Energy Security.  Based on a press teleconference Tuesday afternoon with White House staff, the appropriate way to characterize what we heard is that the speech will promote energy dumb policy that is politically tone deaf to the need for real leadership […]

[Read more →]

Elton Sherwin’s Addicted to Energy is an eminently readable and accessible letter to the nation’s governor. This 300+ page “letter” lays out a set of key issues and check lists that provide any (sane) state government (Governor) a sensible starting point for transforming their state from inefficient fossil fuel status quo to a more prosperous climate-friendly […]

[Read more →]

The cup runneth over in the Washington, DC, area when it comes to meaningful events for discussing the military and energy/climate issues. In addition to three events discussed earlier this week in TCO, energy, climate, and the military — a brief framing discussion, next Wednesday and Thursday the Association of Climate Change Officers (ACCO) will […]

[Read more →]

No serious student of energy can deny the inanity — the senselessness — of our energy system in the face of increasingly serious resource challenges (Peak Oil, climate change, etc). Beyond the necessity for confronting these challenges to stave off catastrophic implications, a simple (yet incredibly complex) truth: options exist to foster sanity out of the […]

[Read more →]

Yet another guest post from the thoughtful BruceMcF. Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence Suppose that you wanted to inject a framing into a purely political strategy which also happened to involve sabotaging the future of the nation’s economy? “We sabotaged the future economy.” Hmmm, that would be a bad talking point there. […]

[Read more →]

We need, in our discussions of energy and climate issues, to focus on costs and benefits of action (or inaction). As regular readers are likely aware, ‘total cost of ownership’ (TCO) (or total ownership cost (TOC) or life-cycle cost (LCC) or CtO (cost to own)) is central to my way of considering energy issues.  TCO, […]

[Read more →]

This guest post comes from the Checks and Balances project which, in this case, provides a ‘check’ on the language from a House chair and some balance by not abridging the words of Daniel Webster. Thursday, Doc Hastings is holding yet another, carefully scripted, incredibly slanted hearing to promote his position that the Department of the […]

[Read more →]

Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s executive director, had his hair clipped in public today.  And, well, I’m interested in learning about that lock of hair. You see, today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced measures to regulate mercury emissions from coal-fired electricity production.  Expect howling screams from the anti-business Chamber of Commerce, from verbal polluters […]

[Read more →]

Let’s play word association. Read the following phrase and what’s the first thing that comes to mind. Rich family … There are, of course, many possible from Hilton to Mellon to Rothschilds to … Yes, there are many that might come to mind  For me, the ‘first to mind’ would be the Rockefellers Robber baron Rockefeller. […]

[Read more →]

Two years ago my husband and I, empty nesters for more than 20 years, moved from our four-bedroom split-level house to a three-bedroom condo and from a car-dependent life to an apartment community one and a half blocks from Washington, D.C.’s Metro. As part of the renovation of our new home we purchased Energy Star […]

[Read more →]