A new paper by Stanford lawyer Felix Mormann argues that pricing alone will not drive the transition to renewable energy, one of the key ingredients to a low-carbon economy necessary to mitigate the impacts of climate change. He identifies and analyzes the obstacles presently barring the rise of renewables, evaluates (more…)

Germany responded swiftly to the Japanese nuclear crisis by announcing a decision to phase out its older nuclear stations. Japan followed a few weeks later saying that it intends to focus on renewable energy (although it won’t do away with nuclear power altogether). And now Switzerland is looking to (more…)

As the second largest producer of hydropower in the United States, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation has a key role to play in President Obama’s blueprint for a secure energy future. Reclamation’s staff of engineers, biologists, hydrologists and other professionals are working tirelessly to conserve water and improve energy efficiencies at our projects (more…)

I stumbled across a documentary programme on BBC World a while back, Nature Inc. It visited two Asian regions where the impacts of climate change are being experienced and described the active local measures under way to cope with them. It’s the sort of programme we ought to be seeing a great deal more (more…)

In 2007, the United States Congress gave the Department of Defense specific orders to have a minimum of 25 percent of all energy come from renewable sources of energy by the year 2025. According to the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary for Defense’s director of Facilities Energy, Joe Sikes, (more…)

“A gradual contraction into more sustainable patterns of resource use is not the norm for a society that is exploiting the environment. The norm is a last-ditch effort to maintain outward displays of power, and then a sudden, and dramatic, collapse.” That’s one of the foreboding statements with which Steve Hallett and John Wright punctuate their (more…)

In 1896 Charles Dow created the Dow Jones Industrial Average to track the nation’s leading nine companies. Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average or Dow 30 is made up of 30 leading US companies. It is the world’s best known stock index and everyone has heard of it. (more…)

What if the ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide that are heating up the atmosphere could be used to produce an abundant supply of liquid fuels? The U.S. government and private labs are pursuing that Holy Grail of renewable energy — but for now the cost of large-scale production is prohibitive. (more…)

On May 14, the UK Guardian newspaper reported on a sweeping new carbon emissions deal crafted by the Committee on Climate Change, or CCC.

The deal is being put forth by UK Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, a Liberal Democrat and the CCC’s strongest backer, and opposed by none other than (more…)

Gary Comer was a wealthy retired American who found on a private voyage in 2001 that he was able to easily navigate the normally ice-bound Northwest Passage in northern Canada. It perturbed him that he could do so and resulted in his substantial funding of scientific research into the global extent of abrupt climate change. Glaciologist Richard Alley, oceanographer (more…)