April 24, 2026

As Gulf Slick Spreads Environmental Movement Takes Unexpected Heat

by Keith Schneider

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate economist,  Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times, and friend of most things green wrote a piece over the weekend that should give environmentalists heartache. In a column about the big Gulf oil spill, Krugman described how the environmental movement has been steadily losing political momentum because it’s been so successful in scrubbing the skies and clearing the waters of the visible hazards of pollution. He also lays …

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Go Blue! “Be Nice” While You “Shape Destiny,” Obama Counsels at University of Michigan Commencement

by Keith Schneider1

Barack Obama addressed 90,000 people Saturday at the Big House, the University of Michigan’s football stadium, where he was greeted warmly by the largest crowd to hear the president since the inauguration. Among the nearly 10,000 graduates was my daughter Kayla. The university is a place of innovation, stability, and optimism in a state that has endured more negative consequences of the recession, and the underlying transitional factors that caused it, than any other. The …

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A Miserable Week

by Keith Schneider0

A week that began with a political blow – the disruption of the bipartisan Senate team drawing up climate and energy legislation – ended in environmental disaster. A vicious oil spill, produced by the explosion and sinking last week of the Deep Horizon drilling rig, inundated the Gulf shoreline and threatened to wreck the aquatic diversity that makes the Louisiana coast one of the world’s most productive fisheries. Twenty one years ago, as a reporter …

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Climate-Denying US Chamber Has A Point When It Comes to Grassroots Resistance to Clean Energy

by Keith Schneider1

The US Chamber of Commerce and many of its state-based affiliates, including the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, are nests of ideological movement conservatives devoted to all manner of influential key words that have shaped how states and Washington view their duties to mother nature. The Chamber has promoted such concepts as “free-market environmentalism” — which means allowing market trends to strip the earth — and “sound science,” which is a euphemism for ignoring science-based fact …

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Earth, Wind, Fire On Day of Onrushing Risks

by Keith Schneider0

The accelerating consequences of the warming Earth, the hazards associated with increasing reliance on fossil fuels, the promise of big clean energy projects, and the difficulties in advancing a national climate and energy policy fit for the 21st century came into sharp focus today in Washington and across the nation. In Boston, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that aftter nine years of public confrontation, the United States had reached a decision to approve crucial permits …

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Earth, Wind, and Fire On Day of Onrushing Climate Risks

by Keith Schneider0

The accelerating consequences of the warming Earth, the hazards associated with increasing reliance on fossil fuels, the promise of big clean energy projects, and the difficulties in advancing a national climate and energy policy fit for the 21st century came into sharp focus today in Washington and across the nation. In Boston, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that aftter nine years of public confrontation, the United States had reached a decision to approve crucial permits …

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When It Comes to Climate and Clean Energy, “Just Say No” Has Become Too Popular

by Keith Schneider0

Monday, in the parlance of Washington policy and journalism, was scheduled to be a potential day of breakthrough in the work to achieve action on the warming climate. Senators John Kerry (Mass.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (Conn.) had announced that they’d come to consensus on what a bipartisan energy and climate policy fit for the 21st century looked like. The results were to be unveiled at a news briefing that had global import. …

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Judy Feder, My Friend, Dies at 53

by Keith Schneider4

Along the avenue of beautiful women Judy Feder, who died yesterday at 53, never failed to attract notice. It wasn’t just her slender waist and long lashes, her red hair and porcelain skin, her knowing smile and flashing eyes. That all helped, of course. Those drawn into Judy’s field of gravity became aware of another dimension to her loveliness — her spirit, which moved at its own pace and was adorned with words like this: …

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Though the Need is Urgent, Earth Day’s Best Moment May Lie in Past

by Keith Schneider0

This week, just a day before the nation marked the 40th Earth Day, the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded 50 miles from the Louisiana coast, leaving 11 people dead, dozens injured, and a pulse of crude oil that is spreading across the Gulf of Mexico. The blast, which caused the platform to sink on Earth Day itself, came 16 days after 29 men perished in a West Virginia coal mine – the worst American mining …

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Biomass Gets Traverse City Go Ahead

by Keith Schneider0

Just in time for Earth Day’s 40th celebration, the Traverse City Light and Power board voted last night to proceed with more due diligence — analysis, fuel studies, engineering designs, zoning decisions, many other data points — to acquire 10 mw of renewable energy with a state-of-the-art clean renewable wood biomass plant. Congratulations to the staff and board for making a tough and courageous decision. And thank you to Skip Pruss, director of the state …

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