At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
Bob Giles, a son of the Midwest, former Pulitzer Prize winning editor at the Akron Beacon Journal, and then again as editor and publisher of The Detroit News, has been the curator since 2000 of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. A working newspaper journalist and editor since 1958, Giles knows a thing or two about reporting. He just published a piece in Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and …
Among the accumulated roles I play is to report and write what the New York Times calls “advances,” short for advance obituaries of prominent people. The Times has a list of completed advances that numbers around 1,400, roughly 30 of which I’ve completed. It likely sounds ghoulish to most people, but writing about well-known players on the national stage is often an efficient way to understand a place or an era or both. Today Daryl …
Today diplomats and climate action specialists met in Bonn for the first international climate meeting since the Copenhagen summit in December. April in fact marks the start of an intensifying schedule of global negotiating sessions on climate action, and on the international economy. NGO climate leaders from USCAN and our member organizations are in Bonn. Among the many things they are doing is to help make the case to delegates that at the very moment …
Eartha Jane Melzer, one of the reporters in Michigan whose work merits close attention, posted a piece a week ago on Michigan Messenger that described the legal work the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council are doing to block a big new coal-fired power plant in Bay City. Here is one of the important events associated with the transition to the clean energy economy. On one hand environmental organizations are pursuing legal suits …
The work to achieve a climate and energy bill in the United States is moving with considerably slower momentum this spring than it did at the same time last year. A number of factors contribute, not the least of which is the time and focus that the White House and Democrats in Congress devoted to enacting a national health care bill, which passed earlier this month. Another factor is the flagging U.S. economy and the …
One of the potential success stories of clean energy development on private and federal lands in the West involves NV Energy, which announced in February that it will purchase 32 megawatts of renewable energy from a planned Central Nevada geothermal plant. The Ram Power Corporation is developing the Clayton Valley Geothermal Project, which is scheduled to begin construction in 2012. It is one of five geothermal leases that Ram Power has acquired from the Bureau …
On March 2 more than 60 residents of Canyon City, Idaho appeared at a public hearing to consider a new 500-kilovolt transmission line that might run through their county. Most weren’t happy about it. “They brought us in late and they haven’t fulfilled their public involvement responsibilities,” said Ken Holliday, a rancher. The public concern that residents displayed about Idaho Power’s 250-foot corridor, and the 150-foot tall towers that would command its route, is a …
Now that passage of health care legislation proved that Congress is still capable of acting on big ideas, Washington this week was aflutter with action on the climate and energy bill. White House Legislative Affairs Director Phil Schiliro, and the president’s energy and climate adviser, Carol Browner, met mid-week with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Topic: developing a strategy to corral the 60 votes needed to pass the measure in the Senate. The same day …
Next month Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is scheduled to rule on a proposal to build one of the most contentious clean energy projects in the country. It is a 420-megawatt offshore wind farm in Massachusetts called Cape Wind. Audra Parker, the young leader of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, has emerged as a local public interest celebrity as a result of her work to prevent developers from constructing 130 turbines five miles out in …
A few months ago I became a communications adviser working several hours per week with Traverse City Light & Power, a small municipal utility in my home region that has proposed to acquire 30 percent of its power by 2020 from local renewable resources. In pursuit of that goal TCL&P has purchased 10 mw of wind power from a windfarm in McBain, Michigan 50 miles south. It also purchased 2 mw of landfill gas generation …