Get Energy Smart! NOW!

Today, President Obama game a speech (text and comments after the fold) on energy issues. The takeaway line when it comes to clean energy: “If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they probably must have been founding members of the flat earth society. They would not believe that the world was […]

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Environmental organizations are showing a too rare unity in their opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. In the U.S. Congress, the Republicans are fighting hard to get around reasonable review processes for safety, environmental impact, and understanding of the national interest to support a pipeline to move highly-polluting Canadian tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries […]

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This guest post from Barath lays out a perspective on the interactions of climate change and peak oil — interactions in terms of people as well as substance.  My perspective from a few years ago might be of interest:  THE Progressive Crises: Global Warming and Peak Oil.   I’ve been wondering for the past year about […]

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Sunday, Brendan Smith and Jeremy Brecher asked Are Progressives in Denial About Climate Change? If you listen to right wing commentators, you might think American progressives are leading the charge to protect our planet from climate change. Would that it were so! Smith and Brecher lay out a series of challenges and issues that coalesce […]

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Globally, humanity faces many serious challenges that relate to resource challenges. Writ large there is a calculation: # of people * resource use per capita = demand on resources.  Very simply, that last (the “demand”) is overwhelming natural resources: we are overfishing, tropical forests are disappearing, top soil disappears in dust storms, acquifer water is […]

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As rumored prior to the release of President Obama’s proposed 2012 budget, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) program will take a serious hit, roughly a 50 percent cut. As David Dayen put it prior to the budget’s release, The Administration says this lowers LIHEAP assistance to where it was in 2008. But […]

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As per Guardian reporting, U.S. diplomats in Saudi Arabia have picked up very serious information over the years calling into question Saudi abilities to increase oil production in line with what energy agencies (such as IEA and EIA) have predicting they could accomplish to meet growing world demand in the coming years,  whether the Saudis […]

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The global economy’s life-blood (even if it has been on life support) truly doesn’t flow through the CAC 40 or Wall Street, but is pumped from the ground and into our chemical plants, manufacturing processes, and transportation. We should, as a global society, be working to “keep the grease in the ground” for a variety […]

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Global Warming … Peak Oil … Financial meltdown … these all threaten our future prospects, our ability to see a positive future reality for ourselves and descendents. Twenty years ago, the first President Bush stated that “the American Way of Life is not up for negotiation”, showing an inability to imagine catastrophe from non-negotiation and […]

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Hybrids are too often thought of simply in terms of personal vehicles. They are also penetrating the big vehicle market space. Consider the average delivery truck and all its starts/stops. There is a lot of energy to capture there, which is why UPS is pursuing hybrids. And, as per Walmart and its hybrid trucks, they […]

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