This post is dedicated to my hometown, Hazleton Pennsylvania

This corridor hits close to home for your humble correspondent as I, Alexander John Lennartz, am a born and raised Pennsylvanian…who did not step foot on a passenger train in the state until age 25 when I moved to the greater Philadelphia area.

In my part of the country there is no passenger rail. A fact of life for the good people of Northeast Pennsylvania is that you cannot live without a car. This was, is and for the foreseeable future will be to only mean of transportation over mid to long distances. Pennsylvania’s proud locomotive heritage has fallen to the point that many in the state regard trains in the historical sense, no longer are a form of modern transportation. The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Lancaster Country is a testament to when rails crisscrossed the Keystone State and help build and power America, moving goods and people quickly and efficiently.

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By all accounts the cash for clunkers incentive program has exceeded all expectations in both volume of sales, as well as answering skeptics by getting fuel inefficient vehicles off the road.

The new vehicles being purchased average nearly 10 mpg higher, saving nearly 4 million barrels of oil per year and eliminating the production of tons of greenhouse gases.

More importantly, the program and its surrounding attention seems to have driven consumers towards hybrids and fuel efficient vehicles even more than a 50 cent spike in the price of gasoline. According to Brian Benstock, the VP and GM of Paragon Honda and Acura, the program is also introducing new customers to imports. Benstock said the program has reversed the ratio of domestic/import trade-ins at his dealership. Previously about 70 percent of his customers were trading one import (mostly Hondas) for another. Now it’s the opposite: 70 percent of people walking in the door are swapping American made autos for Hondas.

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Nearly 4 million green-collar jobs could open up in the U.S. in coming decades. How can you land one? Submit a stellar cover letter, and you’ll vastly improve your chances.

A lot of employers put great stock in these tidy summaries of why you want a green job and why your qualifications make you the best candidate. Follow general guidelines for good cover letter writing. Make sure to tailor each letter to the specific job you seek. (Generic letters reek of resume blitzes from people looking for any old job.)

After that? Green up your letter with these rules of thumb.

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Update: This article has been modified since its initial publication. Please note that the report mentioned in this article is not a United Nations publication. More information about the authors and the report can be found here.

A major report issued by the United Nations Millennium Project has just been released. It finds that half the world appears vulnerable to social instability and violence due to increasing and potentially prolonged unemployment from the recession as well as several longer-term issues: decreasing water, food, and energy supplies per person; the cumulative effects of climate change; and increasing migrations due to political, environmental, and economic conditions. It also finds some good in the global financial crisis, which may be helping humanity to move from its often selfish, self-centered adolescence to a more globally responsible adulthood.

After 13 years of the Millennium Project’s global futures research, it is increasingly clear that the world has the resources to address its challenges. Coherence and direction has been lacking. But recent meetings of the U.S. and China, as well as of NATO and Russia, and the birth of the G-20 plus the continued work of the G-8 promise to improve global strategic collaboration. It remains to be seen if this spirit of cooperation can continue and if decisions will be made on the scale necessary to really address the global challenges discussed in this report.

When Congress returns from its summer vacation it will consider legislation that could energize investment in renewable energy projects with an almost “cash for clunkers”-like fervor.

Like the cash for clunkers legislation (and American Idol, and The Office), a feed-in tariff bill would be a ripoff of a European idea modified for American consumption. Bills that would require utilities to pay a premium for renewable power have been tried and failed here before, but the time (and composition of the Congress) may be right for the fight to take flight.

Introduced by Democratic Senators Jay Inslee (WA) and Bill Dellahunt (MA), the bill would guarantee a market for the renewable power projects and would do much to calms fears in today’s skittish investment arena. Feed-in tariffs have been overwhelmingly successful in Germany and Spain, basically creating the solar industries in both those countries.

Because a feed-in tariff promises American jobs and reduces foreign energy dependency, Congress will likely give the idea more of a fair hearing when the leaves begin to turn in DC.

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In a new study conducted by the University of Cincinnati (UC), environmental health researchers found that major countries in three continents fail to acknowledge the hazards of lead based paint, allowing manufacturers to continue selling consumer paints containing dangerously high levels of lead. According to study, 73 percent of consumer paint brands tested from 12 countries representing 46 percent of the world’s population exceeded current U.S. standard of 600 parts per million (ppm). Additionally, 69 percent of the brands had at least one sample exceeding 10,000 ppm. Scott Clark, a professor of environmental health at UC, stated that “lead paint exposure remains a serious global health threat” considering the majority of American consumer goods are being produced overseas.

The Pacific Northwest just finished four days of triple digit temperatures, which put the heat on renewable energy sources to keep up with demand. Just as records were being set for power consumption, wind power generation slowed due to the calm air from the locked-in high pressure system.

The extreme weather highlights the reality that wind — and to a lesser extent hydropower — may not be a panacea for power production.

Southern Washington and the Portland metro area had a record breaking streak of warmth that pushed energy demand to record highs, but the high pressure system also featured calm breezes. The local utility Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) had to quickly balance the reduction in wind power with increases in hydropower.

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