Energy

China’s Ecological Footprint and New Chemical Policies

November 24, 2010

Everyone’s eyes are on China. It is growing faster than rabbit make babies and it looks to many of us that it is leapfrogging the U.S. and maybe even Europe as well on clean tech. Nonetheless, it still has huge environmental demons. The World Wildlife Federation (WWF), the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), the Global Footprint Network, and China’s Institute of Geographic Sciences and National Resources Research (IGSNRR) created a report recently on China’s Ecological…

Grassroots Activism Key to Pressuring Banks to Stop Financing Mountain Top Destruction

November 10, 2010

This week marks another example of the importance of grassroots pressure and non-violent direct action in effecting real environmental and social change. One of the many actions from last month’s monumental Appalacia Rising in Washington, D.C. was a sit-in of PNC Bank, which is the largest financier of mountain top destruction coal mining. A group of 35 concerned citizens staged a sit-in by bringing mountain soil into the PNC lobby, singing songs, and highlighting the impact of mountain-top destruction from…

Climate Trial Holds Government and Corporations Accountable

November 8, 2010

Citizens gathered in downtown Salt Lake City Saturday to hold their very own climate trial-with or without the courts. On trial were Tim DeChristopher, the U.S. government, citizens, and the “accidental bastard children of the 14th Amendment,” i.e., corporations. Organized by Peaceful Uprising, the Climate Trial was prompted by the case of DeChristopher, who is being charged with disrupting a Bureau of Land Management land auction for oil and gas drilling in December 2008 and whose trial has been delayed…

Rev. Billy Talen: Enchantment at the Singing Sit-in at PNC Bank

November 8, 2010

This is a special guest post by Rev. Billy Talen. There is a feeling of enchantment in the act of resisting a big deadly institution; in standing in the lobby of a bank, say, a bank that arranges hundreds of millions so that mountains will explode and be made lifeless, and then bulldozed into the valleys nearby, where people live. This is done to get at the coal seam beneath, for the power. There is a feeling, standing in the…

The Climate Trial We Should Be Having

November 4, 2010

If you don’t know Tim DeChristopher, or Bidder #70, this Friday is your chance to learn more about him and why he is facing many years in federal prison. His trial has been delayed eight times now, perhaps in an attempt to keep the public eye off contentious issues: the hawking of pristine public lands to gas and oil developers and the connection between burning dirty fuels and climate disruption. What did Tim DeChristopher do? In December of 2008, in…

Utah, Meet Tar Sands. Tar Sands, Meet Resistance

October 29, 2010

The image above is from Northern Alberta, site of the most extensive tar sands operations. Some are wondering if this is what a 213-acre section in eastern Utah will look like a few years from now? If you haven’t had the displeasure of seeing tar sands operations up close, they may be coming to a state near you. In September Utah’s Division of Oil, Gas & Mining gave final approval for the first large-scale tar sands mine in the United…

Pentagon Takes Sun Power to the Next Level: Solar Nukes and Landmines

October 29, 2010

“Starting February 2011, up to twenty U.S. nuclear devices and facilities will be operational using mostly the sun as their source of power.” Admiral Charles Bollinger said. “The mission is number one. But if we can get the job done and save energy and money while reducing our carbon footprint, I say let’s do it. I don’t buy into the view that things like nuclear weapons and bunker-busters can’t be made more sustainable. It’s my job to make sure the war-making ability of the U.S. is done in a sustainable manner.”

Joel Francis vs. Charles Koch: An Update on the Prop 23 Debate Challenge

October 27, 2010

So the scenario I imagined yesterday did not come to pass. No debate. Certainly no muffins. Who would have thought that Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, would ignore Joel Francis’ challenge to debate him on Prop 23 or skip the opportunity to explain why his company is meddling in California’s clean energy future? Joel Francis, California State University, Los Angeles senior, former Marine and debate team veteran, traveled from California to the Koch offices in Wichita, KS yesterday to…

Joel Francis Offers Prop 23 Challenge: Explain Yourself Mr. Koch

October 25, 2010

I’m imagining the scenario in my mind’s eye: Joel Francis, the Cal State senior who challenged billionaire Charles Koch to meet him “anytime, anywhere in the state before election day” to debate California’s Prop 23, shows up Tuesday afternoon at the office of Koch Industries in Wichita, Kansas. Ding-dong. “Hello?” “Yes, this is Joel Francis, California resident and concerned citizen. On behalf of millions of young Californians, I’m here to talk with Charles about why he is meddling with our…

Bioneers 2010: Million Kid March For Climate Action Announced

October 20, 2010

Alec Loorz, founder of Kids vs. Global Warming, began his career as a climate change activist when he was 12 years old. You read that right, 12! That’s when he saw Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” that “changed his life forever.” He became so moved that he has been speaking truth to power, organizing and empowering youth, and speaking to large audiences ever since. He’s now a junior in high school and a winner of a Brower Youth Award. At…

Hawaii Riding High On Big Waves Solar Power

October 20, 2010

This guest post comes to us from Reginald Norris, Executive Vice President & General Counsel for Clean Energy Experts. Clean Energy Experts’s mission is to increase the adoption of economically and environmentally beneficial energy solutions by educating consumers through a portfolio of websites, MyEnergySolution.com and MultifamilyG.com, on the facts about clean energy and energy efficiency, enabling them to make the right decisions for their home. People who visit Hawaii are typically struck by the same things that every other tourist…

Bioneers 2010: Dispatch from an Earth Community Movement

October 19, 2010

Once again, the 3-day Bioneers mother-ship has landed and departed, and a thousand pods of social and environmental change have dispersed across the globe, refreshed and re-energized. Or to use the less technological metaphor by Janine Benyus, founder of the Biomimicry Institute, “This is kind of a seasonal migration ceremony, Bioneers. If we were migrating birds, this would be our staging ground, where we come and talk about what we have hatched this year and what breeding was like.” The…

Native Americans Going Solar, and Winning Awards

October 19, 2010

The Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) announced the winners of its 2010 Innovation Awards recently. One of the well-deserving turned out to be Lakota Solar Enterprises, a renewable energy company owned entirely by Native Americans. Jeanne of CalFinder Solar reports: Lakota Solar Enterprises, an extension of Native American non-profit group Trees, Water & People (TWP), won the prize for its Great Plains Tribal Communities initiative, the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center, or RCREC, an educational and training facility where individuals from indigenous…

Greece to Revive Its Economy with Green Energy on Old Prison Island?

October 18, 2010

The Aegean island Ai Stratis (about 8 hours by sea from Athens), once a place for Greece to send prisoners, will be the center of an economic revival pilot project via clean, green energy according to Greek prime minister George Papandreou. Transport will get its power from hydrogen and electricity, heating and refrigeration will be from geothermal energy, and about half of the island’s electricity will be from solar and wind energy. The island will also have organic farming. Papandreou’s…