At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
Arguably the central provision of President Obama’s State of the Union address last night was the proposal to generate 80 percent of the nation’s electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 — including nuclear energy and CCS coal technology. Getting there will take a miracle, the same sort of pie in the sky thinking that allowed our president to also present the daft notion of giving 80 percent of Americans access to high speed rail …
Washington’s foreign policy community is all aflutter anticipating the meaning and outcome of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s three-day summit with U.S. President Barack Obama, which starts today. But while the two heads of state focus on resolving what pries them apart, both nations share a dangerous confrontation within their borders over energy demand and water supply—offering a matchless opportunity for new kinds of cooperation on policy, technology, business, and trade. The collision between rising energy …
Michigan and Ohio have emerged as important centers of solar energy manufacturing. Here’s my latest piece in the New York Times. Big question for the two states and the rest of the American clean energy industry: Will the November election snuff out recent advances? Many of the conservative lawmakers elected to state Legislatures, governors’ offices, and Congress campaigned aggressively against climate science and public incentives for renewable energy. — Keith Schneider
On November 29 representatives from 190 countries will be in Cancun, Mexico for the 16th Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Late last week, following a two-day Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in Washington, the Obama administration’s chief climate negotiator told reporters not to expect too much. “I would describe myself right now as neither an optimist nor a pessimist,” said Todd Stern, the State Department’s …
Congratulations are in order for John H. Adams, the co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, who yesterday was named one of the 15 recipients this year of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. Adams is the first founder of an American environmental advocacy organization to receive the award since Russell E. Train was similarly honored in 1991. Train, of course, was a founding board member of the World Wildlife Fund …
There’s nothing like confronting the big fist of climate denial in Congress to decide new tactics are needed to cool the planet. In the past week, U.S. climate activists shook off the national election’s punch to the gut and began delivering a few jabs of their own. This week in California, outgoing Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the formation of a clean energy financing program to commercialize technologies, reduce carbon emissions, and generate renewable energy. …
In 2003, just before major construction began to transform Traverse City’s 19th century psychiatric asylum into the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, Ray Minervini told me that within a decade or so the development would be a mixed use neighborhood with 800 residents, 1,000 jobs, and more than $100 million in residential, retail, and office development. That and other details were published in Traverse Magazine. Today I updated that original article in the New York …
Maybe things aren’t as dismaying as we thought a week ago. Or just a little less in the dismay department. In the last few days, two of the prominent names in American politics and business appeared to reach consistent conclusions about governing, technology, and the warming climate. On Friday, Karl Rove told an audience of natural gas developers in Texas that “climate is gone” as a Congressional issue. And this week, in a Rolling Stone …
Tuesday’s election wasn’t a complete rejection of climate action and the promise of the low-carbon economy. Indeed, in the decisive defeat of California’s Proposition 23 and the re-election of Senator Barbara Boxer, both ideas have salience in the nation’s largest state. Nevada Senator Harry Reid was re-elected and his party retained control of the Senate with several races still undecided. In deciding to outspend the oil industry by a three-to-one margin, investors and executives in …
At the national level America’s environmental movement is in a period of befuddlement. Not exactly a giant mope. But with the big issue of the day — how to gain ground on reducing carbon emissions linked to global warming — the policy and campaign staffs of the big national groups are tagging along as political momentum to deal with climate emmissions is stalled at best, or shifting to reverse. In Tianjin this month progress was …