Guest post by Candace Sheppard Wind energy production in New York State is expected to double in the next five years. Photo by U.S. Department of Energy. A day after a study was released last week about wind turbines killing more than 600,000 bats in the United States in 2012, the Environment America Research Policy Center released its second report about…Continue Reading…
I’m often fascinated by what’s left out of environmental stories. Tim McDonnell has written a piece for Mother Jones that is picked up by the Guardian. It’s titled: “Why the U.S. still doesn’t have a single offshore wind turbine.” There is a major omission in this section on wind opponents: Blowback from “stakeholders”: Whale and bird…Continue Reading…
There’s a lot of teeth gnashing in green circles over the Solyndra fallout. Even if it wasn’t an election year, Republicans would be cynically milking the story for all it’s worth, and that spigot shows no sign of going dry anytime soon. Are they being hypocritical? Sure. You bet they are. But let’s at least be honest and…Continue Reading…
I can’t remember the last time I stood in a room full of people concerned about climate change that was so full of optimism. That would be the launch party of a new foundation devoted to promoting the advancement of thorium. Why would we want that? The idea is to create a new generation of…Continue Reading…
Here’s some straight talk on climate politics: A facile explanation would focus on the ‘merchants of doubt’ who have managed to confuse the public about the reality of human-made climate change. The merchants play a role, to be sure, a sordid one, but they are not the main obstacle to solution of human-made climate change. The bigger problem…Continue Reading…
There is this assumption in environmental and climate circles that the Republican party represents (in the United States) the biggest obstacle to political progress on climate change. Recent developments certainly support this view. Since 2009, the GOP has become increasingly hostile to climate science. Republican presidential hopefuls are marching to this same Tea Party beat (even those…Continue Reading…
It’s prompting the Pentagon to become less fossil fuel dependent and will likely hasten the scale up of renewable energy technologies. From Elisabeth Rosenthal’s must-read front page story in today’s NYT: Even as Congress has struggled unsuccessfully to pass an energy bill and many states have put renewable energy on hold because of the recession,…Continue Reading…
There are varied forces arrayed against wind and solar, but Todd Woody at Yale Environment 360 nicely sums up the situation in the California desert: The Mojave has become a metaphor for an existential crisis in the environmental movement as it tries to balance the development of renewable energy with its traditional mission to protect…Continue Reading…
And some climate activists chided me for making hay out of the Mojave desert/renewable energy controversy. Looks like Romm is taking on Feinstein over this and in doing so, he’s ignited a zesty debate among his loyalists, revealing a green schism that is sure to grow wider and nastier. Or has it already? Craig Goodrich,…Continue Reading…
The controversial wind farm proposed off of Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, will have to overcome yet another hurdle, this latest one thrown up by the National Park Service, which announced yesterday that the Nantucket Sound was eligible to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s an extraordinary ruling on several levels, which…Continue Reading…