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link Amy Goodman’s New Column: “One Man’s Bid to Aid the Environment”

Tim DeChristopher is an economics student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He had just finished his last final exam before winter break. One of the exam questions was: If the oil and gas companies are the only ones who bid on public lands, are the true costs of oil and gas exploitation reflected in the prices paid?

DeChristopher was inspired. He finished the exam, threw on his red parka and went off to the controversial Bureau of Land Management land auction that the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance called “the Bush administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry.” Instead of joining the protest outside, he registered as a bidder, then bought 22,000 acres of public land. That is, he successfully bid on the public properties, located near the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and Dinosaur National Monument, and other pristine areas. The price tag: more than $1.7 million….

December 26, 2008

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Another great ad from the campaign that is injecting reality into the “clean” coal debate. Via Silbatron.

December 23, 2008

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photo One of the many things that blew my mind when I watched “Heat” was the fact that there is a coal-fired power plant a stone’s throw from the Capitol, and that many legislatures treat it like their baby, resisting any changes to it, even ones that would make it cleaner (and would presumably boost the PR potential for coal). Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben, environmental educators and sometimes activists, have sent an open invitation to join them when they occupy the Capitol coal plant in an act of civil disobedience, on Monday, March 2nd. When I lived in New Orleans after the storm, I helped arrange media coverage and attorney assistance when Common Ground Collective occupied a grade school in the Ninth Ward (the city was refusing to clean and reopen it).  But I felt detached from the event, sitting as I was a mile away by phone lines and computers. I’d like to be there, on the front line, and will try to make it to DC for March 2nd.  Let me know if you’d like to join.

One of the many things that blew my mind when I watched “Heat” was the fact that there is a coal-fired power plant a stone’s throw from the Capitol, and that many legislatures treat it like their baby, resisting any changes to it, even ones that would make it cleaner (and would presumably boost the PR potential for coal).

Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben, environmental educators and sometimes activists, have sent an open invitation to join them when they occupy the Capitol coal plant in an act of civil disobedience, on Monday, March 2nd.

When I lived in New Orleans after the storm, I helped arrange media coverage and attorney assistance when Common Ground Collective occupied a grade school in the Ninth Ward (the city was refusing to clean and reopen it).  But I felt detached from the event, sitting as I was a mile away by phone lines and computers.

I’d like to be there, on the front line, and will try to make it to DC for March 2nd.  Let me know if you’d like to join.

December 18, 2008

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quote
Clean coal is like a healthy cigarette.
—

Blan Holman, attorney, Southern Environmental Law Center in Charleson S.C.

As quoted on This Is Reality, a much-hyped, well-funded, and, hopefully, effective new campaign to expose the truth: the emperor has no clothes.  Clean coal technology does not exist.  (If you watch TV, you’ve probably seen their ad.)

Via wayne-remy, atheistramblings, mandalay

December 10, 2008

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Microfinance as the match to the flame

Andy Posner, a 24-year-old Environmental Studies masters student at Brown University, has started the Capital Good Fund, a program in Providence to provide small loans to low-income and minority people and women who want to start green businesses.

He writes that he was inspired by a green job training program in Providence where 25% of the graduates said they want to become entrepreneurs.  According to the director of the program, Mark Kravatz, “they see how green can be good for them, their family and their community, and they want to get in on the game.”

For all the talk about green jobs lately, funding has been slow to come.  There seems to be a fear by lawmakers that they will train too many people too soon, before the building retrofits and solar panel installation gets started in large numbers.  The strength of Posner’s program is that it builds jobs slowly — a small business can take on just a couple new employees every year — and can grow at the same pace as the market for energy-efficient technologies.  When that market takes off, as it surely will, these small businesses will be prepared to handle the demand.  And the profits will stay in lower-income communities, a truly sustainable model of growth.

Hat tip to Jake Brewer.

December 5, 2008

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Clean coal technology — finally revealed! // via The Reality Coalition

December 4, 2008

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A German ad for wind power.  Great stuff.

November 6, 2008

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An address by Al Gore on behalf of Power Vote, a non-partisan organization that is building a movement of one million young people who commit to vote according to environmental and energy issues.   It was aired live on the Web last night.

Power Vote’s about one-third of the way to their goal.  Sign the pledge here.

October 30, 2008

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link Facing New European CO2 Rules, Airlines Promise Higher Fares

The EU is planning to cap greenhouse gas emissions from planes.

By early next decade most of the jets that take off or land from busy airports in cities like London, Paris and Frankfurt will have to comply with European rules on greenhouse gases. The system will include non-European carriers like American Airlines and Singapore Airlines.

A decade from now, a jet thar runs on biofuels may be the only way to fly. Well, we can dream, anyway.

October 28, 2008

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link Sign the petition: Jobs, baby, jobs!

You know how I feel about green jobs (a green collar economy can put America’s working and middle classes to work and help to wean the nation from dirty oil and coal). And you know I feel about increased off-shore drilling (it’s “like stopping at the crack house on the way to the rehab center”). So if you’re with me on this, please sign Apollo Alliance’s petition:

We demand that you help end America’s oil dependence. We demand investments in clean energy and green-collar jobs to jumpstart our economy.

We’ve had enough of sky-high energy bills, gas prices, and unemployment rates.

We demand… Jobs, Baby, Jobs!

October 27, 2008

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