By Alyssa Battistoni18 May 2012 Coal is without question our dirtiest fuel source: When burned, it dumps toxins like mercury and nitrogen oxides into the air and packs an outsize punch when it comes to carbon emissions. Since America has a lot of it, though, we’ve tended to use a lot: Historically, around half our […]
By JAMES HANSEN9 May 2012 GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.” If Canada proceeds, […]
By David Sassoon, InsideClimate News10 May 2012 Over the last decade, Charles and David Koch have emerged into public view as billionaire philanthropists pushing a libertarian brand of political activism that presses a large footprint on energy and climate issues. They have created and supported non-profit organizations, think tanks and political groups that work to […]
By Suzanne Goldenberg US environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk8 May 2012 A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama’s energy agenda. A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama […]
[Desdemona prefers this solution: Atmospheric Vortex Engine] By Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk 3 May 2012 Combating climate change will require an expansion of nuclear power, respected economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Thursday, in remarks that are likely to dismay some sections of the environmental movement. Prof Sachs said atomic energy was needed because it […]
London, 25 April 2012 (IEA) – While progress is being made on renewable energy, most clean energy technologies are not being deployed quickly enough, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said today in an annual progress report presented to ministers and representatives of nations that together account for four-fifths of global energy demand. The report, Tracking […]
By Frank Rich 22 April 2012 […] Sugar daddies—whom I’ll define here as private donors or their privately held companies writing checks totaling $1 million or more (sometimes much more) in this election cycle—are largely a Republican phenomenon, most of them one degree of separation from Karl Rove and his unofficial partners in erecting a […]
By Rebecca Leber12 April 2012 A handful of outside groups, fueled by oil and coal dollars, are committing tens of millions to propel Big Oil to the forefront of the 2012 elections — outspending the Obama campaign on political energy ads by an overwhelming amount. In the first three-and-a-half months of 2012, groups including Americans for […]
By Severin Carrell, www.guardian.co.uk 6 April 2012 Averting the worst consequences of human-induced climate change is a “great moral issue” on a par with slavery, according to the leading Nasa climate scientist Prof Jim Hansen. He argues that storing up expensive and destructive consequences for society in future is an “injustice of one generation to […]
By Nicole Cohen4 April 2012 Ten years ago this spring, the residents of Cheshire, Ohio, had a decision to make: They could stay in their homes and suffer the effects of pollution from a nearby coal-burning power plant; or they could let that plant’s owner buy them out and, building by building, dismantle their town. […]