Category Archives: wind power

2016 will go down in history as the first year of the rest of our lives — not in a good way.

Myron Ebell, a director at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, would head Trump’s EPA transition team, E&E Daily reports. Ebell also chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, a pro-business group focused on pushing climate denial.

While Ebell generally maintains that climate change is a hoax, he’s also argued that if it does exist, it’s actually a good thing. “Life in many places would become more pleasant,” he wrote in 2006. “Instead of 20 below zero in January in Saskatoon, it might be only 10 below. And I don’t think too many people would complain if winters in Minneapolis became more like winters in Kansas City.” He has less to say about the summers in Minneapolis, which, if current emissions trends continue, will feel like summers in Mesquite, Texas, by 2100.

Ebell’s waffling is in-line with the candidate’s, who seems to have spontaneously changed his mind about climate change during the first presidential debate. When accused by Hillary Clinton of calling climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, Trump flat-out denied it, despite a notorious tweet saying just that.

Ebell joins energy lobbyist Mike McKenna, George W. Bush’s former Interior Department solicitor David Bernhardt, and oil tycoon Harold Hamm on Trump’s team.

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2016 will go down in history as the first year of the rest of our lives — not in a good way.

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India will jump on the bandwagon for global climate action.

Myron Ebell, a director at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, would head Trump’s EPA transition team, E&E Daily reports. Ebell also chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, a pro-business group focused on pushing climate denial.

While Ebell generally maintains that climate change is a hoax, he’s also argued that if it does exist, it’s actually a good thing. “Life in many places would become more pleasant,” he wrote in 2006. “Instead of 20 below zero in January in Saskatoon, it might be only 10 below. And I don’t think too many people would complain if winters in Minneapolis became more like winters in Kansas City.” He has less to say about the summers in Minneapolis, which, if current emissions trends continue, will feel like summers in Mesquite, Texas, by 2100.

Ebell’s waffling is in-line with the candidate’s, who seems to have spontaneously changed his mind about climate change during the first presidential debate. When accused by Hillary Clinton of calling climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, Trump flat-out denied it, despite a notorious tweet saying just that.

Ebell joins energy lobbyist Mike McKenna, George W. Bush’s former Interior Department solicitor David Bernhardt, and oil tycoon Harold Hamm on Trump’s team.

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India will jump on the bandwagon for global climate action.

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What the Candidates Might Say Tonight About the World’s Most Important Issue

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
People pause near a bus adorned with large photos of candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump before the first presidential debate. Mary Altaffer/AP

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Climate change is a grave threat to our future, but it probably won’t come up at Monday’s presidential debate. Topics for the event include “Securing America,” and although you’d think issues of national security might involve climate change (the military certainly does), if history is any indication, it likely won’t get mentioned at all.

But if it does get the attention it deserves, here’s where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton stand:

Dirty energy: Clinton supports some natural gas extraction on public lands, is against offshore drilling in the Arctic and the Atlantic, and has pledged $30 billion to provide suffering coal communities with health care, education, and job retraining as we move away from coal as a source of energy.

Trump has promised to boost coal production, ease environmental regulations, open federal lands to oil and gas extraction, and increase permits for oil pipelines. He also is considering appointing an oil executive to head the Department of Interior and a fracking mogul to lead the Department of Energy.

Clean energy: Clinton has said she would install more than half a billion solar panels in the United States by the end of her first term, and that under her presidency, we will generate enough clean energy to power every home in America by 2027.

Trump has said wind power is a great killer of birds (it’s not) and that solar is too expensive to be a viable source of energy, despite the fact that the cost of solar has now reached record lows—and with proper government investment, it would get even cheaper. Trump also objects to Obama’s signature environmental legislation, the Clean Power Plan, as well as the Paris Climate Accord, which he says he would cancel.

Environmental justice: After a debate in Flint, Michigan, in April, Clinton said she would require federal agencies to devise plans to deal with lead poisoning and other environmental justice issues, and she pledged to clean up more than 450,000 polluted sites around the United States.

Trump, on the other hand, mocked the Democratic National Committee for including climate justice in the party’s platform, and has previously vowed to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency—or, as he calls it, “the Department of Environmental”—although he’s recently backtracked on that particular idea.

Fossil fuel donations: While Republican presidential candidates can usually count on generous support from the fossil fuel industry, this year is the exception. Between both individual and corporation donations, Clinton has taken nearly twice as much from Big Oil as Trump, and some oil execs may even vote for her. Looks like we can add this to the list of things the great race of 2016 has upended.

Third and fourth party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson won’t be at the debate Monday night, which is too bad, because they tend to have the most interesting answers on climate change…and everything else.

Continued here: 

What the Candidates Might Say Tonight About the World’s Most Important Issue

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You know you want to be Grist’s newest fellow

COME WORK WITH US

You know you want to be Grist’s newest fellow

By on Sep 20, 2016Share

Are you an early-career journalist, storyteller, or multimedia wizard who digs what we do? Then Grist wants you!

We are now accepting applications for the spring 2017 class of the Grist Fellowship Program.

This time around we’re looking for all-stars in (count ’em) THREE different areas: editorial, justice, and video. You’ll find deets on all three fellowship opportunities here.

The Grist Fellowship Program is an opportunity to hone your journalistic chops at a national news outlet, deepen your knowledge of environmental issues, and experiment with storytelling. We get to teach you and learn from you and bring your work to our audience. You won’t get rich — but you will get paid. The fellowship lasts six months.

For fellowships that begin in February 2017, please submit applications by Nov. 8, 2016. Full application instructions here.

Good luck!

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

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You know you want to be Grist’s newest fellow

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Watch a GIF of U.S. wind power growing like crazy.

After her husband died from lung cancer in 1969, Hazel M. Johnson started a fight against all the things making her neighbors and loved ones sick. She founded the organization People for Community Recovery, and later met a young organizer named Barack Obama. The two worked together to remove asbestos from Altgeld Gardens, her public housing community — a fight they won in 1989.

Obama later wrote about that fight in his memoir, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. As detailed in Johnson’s Chicago Tribune obituary, Obama was criticized for leaving Johnson out of the story. Johnson passed away in 2011, leaving behind an inspiring legacy that too many people know nothing about. Chicago took a step toward changing that when it renamed 130th Street on the South Side Hazel Johnson EJ Way.

The recognition that marginalized people shoulder too much of the burden from environmental threats inspired Johnson’s life’s work. She was radically ahead of her time. “It’s all very well to embrace saving the rain forests and conserving endangered animal species,” she said, “but such global initiatives don’t even begin to impact communities inhabited by people of color.”

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Watch a GIF of U.S. wind power growing like crazy.

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Today in weird transit news, we bring you a car that smiles and a mind-blowing electric bus.

At the Our Ocean Conference in Washington, D.C., this week, Obama announced the creation of The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which will protect deep-sea ecosystems off the coast of New England.

The monument, which lies about 150 miles east of Massachusetts, includes three submerged canyons — one of them deeper than the Grand Canyon — and four underwater mountains. The designation means that commercial fishing will be phased out of the region, and resource extraction such as mining and drilling will be prohibited. That’s good news for creatures like endangered whales, sea turtles, and deep-sea coral — and those less sexy microorganisms that sustain all of them, like plankton.

According to a recent study by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, ocean temperatures in this section of the Atlantic are projected to warm three times faster than the global average. This new monument, according to the White House, “will help build the resilience of that unique ecosystem, provide a refuge for at-risk species, and create natural laboratories for scientists to monitor and explore the impacts of climate change.”

President Obama has protected more land and water than any other American president — including the world’s largest marine protected area in the Pacific.

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Today in weird transit news, we bring you a car that smiles and a mind-blowing electric bus.

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Chicago just named a street for an environmental justice hero.

At the Our Ocean Conference in Washington, D.C., this week, Obama announced the creation of The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which will protect deep-sea ecosystems off the coast of New England.

The monument, which lies about 150 miles east of Massachusetts, includes three submerged canyons — one of them deeper than the Grand Canyon — and four underwater mountains. The designation means that commercial fishing will be phased out of the region, and resource extraction such as mining and drilling will be prohibited. That’s good news for creatures like endangered whales, sea turtles, and deep-sea coral — and those less sexy microorganisms that sustain all of them, like plankton.

According to a recent study by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, ocean temperatures in this section of the Atlantic are projected to warm three times faster than the global average. This new monument, according to the White House, “will help build the resilience of that unique ecosystem, provide a refuge for at-risk species, and create natural laboratories for scientists to monitor and explore the impacts of climate change.”

President Obama has protected more land and water than any other American president — including the world’s largest marine protected area in the Pacific.

Continue reading:

Chicago just named a street for an environmental justice hero.

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, organic, oven, Smith's, solar, solar panels, solar power, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Chicago just named a street for an environmental justice hero.

President Obama is designating these ocean monuments like it’s his job, or something.

At the Our Ocean Conference in Washington, D.C., this week, Obama announced the creation of The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which will protect deep-sea ecosystems off the coast of New England.

The monument, which lies about 150 miles east of Massachusetts, includes three submerged canyons — one of them deeper than the Grand Canyon — and four underwater mountains. The designation means that commercial fishing will be phased out of the region, and resource extraction such as mining and drilling will be prohibited. That’s good news for creatures like endangered whales, sea turtles, and deep-sea coral — and those less sexy microorganisms that sustain all of them, like plankton.

According to a recent study by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, ocean temperatures in this section of the Atlantic are projected to warm three times faster than the global average. This new monument, according to the White House, “will help build the resilience of that unique ecosystem, provide a refuge for at-risk species, and create natural laboratories for scientists to monitor and explore the impacts of climate change.”

President Obama has protected more land and water than any other American president — including the world’s largest marine protected area in the Pacific.

Link to article:

President Obama is designating these ocean monuments like it’s his job, or something.

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Solar power’s not just for roofs anymore: It’s being woven into fabric.

Soon, everything from sneakers to beach umbrellas could suck up the sun’s energy and turn it into electricity.

Marianne Fairbanks, a fabric designer, and Trisha Andrew, an organic chemistry professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, teamed up to make solar fabric — first invented 15 years ago — a little bit sleeker. They created a layer of polymer-coated fabric that absorbs light and conducts electricity, and can be applied to any type of textile. A four-by-four foot swath of cloth can generate enough power to charge a smartphone.

“I get really excited, because textiles are portable and lightweight,” Fairbanks told Smithsonian. “They could be deployed in the wilderness for a hunter or in the field for medical or military applications in a way that big clunky solar panels never could be.” The duo is working on creating marketable solar-powered products like gloves, tents, and other outdoor gear.

Meanwhile, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology recently developed a different wool textile that harvests wind and solar energy. Who knew the renewable energy fabric industry was so competitive?

Excerpt from: 

Solar power’s not just for roofs anymore: It’s being woven into fabric.

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Corporate giant Bayer just made a deal to buy Monsanto.

After her husband died from lung cancer in 1969, Hazel M. Johnson started a fight against all the things making her neighbors and loved ones sick. She founded the organization People for Community Recovery, and later met a young organizer named Barack Obama. The two worked together to remove asbestos from Altgeld Gardens, her public housing community — a fight they won in 1989.

Obama later wrote about that fight in his memoir, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. As detailed in Johnson’s Chicago Tribune obituary, Obama was criticized for leaving Johnson out of the story. Johnson passed away in 2011, leaving behind an inspiring legacy that too many people know nothing about. Chicago took a step toward changing that when it renamed 130th Street on the South Side Hazel Johnson EJ Way.

The recognition that marginalized people shoulder too much of the burden from environmental threats inspired Johnson’s life’s work. She was radically ahead of her time. “It’s all very well to embrace saving the rain forests and conserving endangered animal species,” she said, “but such global initiatives don’t even begin to impact communities inhabited by people of color.”

Link: 

Corporate giant Bayer just made a deal to buy Monsanto.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Bunn, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, wind power | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Corporate giant Bayer just made a deal to buy Monsanto.