Get Energy Smart! NOW!

This guest post is from Bill McKibben who is the co-founder of the grassroots climate group 350.org, and Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College. Nothing tests a relationship like home renovation (well, maybe twittering crotch shots, but I mean for ordinary folks). Fixing the kitchen, putting in a new bathroom: “It can bring up core […]

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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 […]

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Today, in a gesture that legitimately frustrated many, the President walked across Lafeyette Park to give an address to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  There the President was, smiling and thanking for an introduction a man, Tom Donahue, who has worked hard to destroy President Obama and to undermine President Obama’s agenda.  The President’s speech […]

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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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First Lady Michelle Obama had an interesting mix of Americans in her box for the State of the Union speech. Among them was an Oregon businessman: Jim Houser, Portland, OR Jim Houser and his wife have owned an auto repair shop in Portland, Oregon for over 25 years, and they don’t want to lose valuable […]

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In the State of the Union address, President Obama referred back to President Kennedy’s call for America to go to the moon. Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik¸ we had no idea how we’d beat them to the moon. The science wasn’t […]

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Since before the 2008 election, the core challenge for the incoming President was clear: JOBS! JOBS! JOBS! Yes, we were amid a collapse of the economic system, it required stabilization. JOBS! JOBS! JOBS! Yes, our energy situation was (is) a mess and the climate is boiling. JOBS! JOBS! JOBS! Yes, our political system is broken. […]

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Does this capture the Obama presidency? “model of a modern American President. A liberal one at first but now it seems I have a centrist bent …” “Centrist”, sadly, seems defined in rather conservative terms as there has been such movement to the right in the Overton Window due to decades-long investment by such true […]

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Yesterday, President Barack Obama announced a $50 billion investment in the nation’s transportation infrastructure with an infrastructure investment bank to come to support future investments. There is much of value to this program, from the very simple reality that there is a huge back-log of investment requirements to repair the nation’s infrastructure (let alone bring […]

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When it comes to environmental and energy cartooning, there is no other major outlet’s cartoonists who comes close to matching the knowledgeable and insightful cartooning that Tom Toles brings to the pages of The Washington Post. As commented before, With Toles, we don’t know whether to laugh or cry. But, he last won the Pulitzer […]

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