I’m encouraged by a Grist post: ‘Does Facebook deserve the hell it’s catching from Greenpeace?’ Apparently Facebook’s planned humongous data centre in Ohio will be powered by local utility Pacific Power, which is mostly coal-based. Greenpeace is recommending (and I agree) that the social networking giant should use its size and clout to pressure Pacific [...]
Also posted in Coal's End |
As a recent dropout from the corporate sector, the feral attacks on climate science and the scientists themselves are quite transparent to me. What puzzled me was why this savaging seems to actually work – doubts about climate science do seem have escalated. Why? Bill McKibben, in ‘The attack on climate science is the O.J. [...]
Also posted in Coal's End |
Keeping in touch with what is actually happening with energy – the shifts and battles – is tough. Both the general media and the business press have their distorting prisms, which mostly focus on the sensational rather than the evaluative. So it was refreshing to read this 2009 roundup, published in yesterday’s Huffington Post, from Bruce Nilles, [...]
Also posted in Coal's End |
Days after stumbling across a new book on oil, Peter Maass’s Crude World, a regular email from Harper spruiks a fascinating, more general book on energy, Amanda Little’s Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells – Our Ride to the Renewable Future. Any book that comes with blurbs by Robert Redford, Jim Rogers (Duke [...]
A little old but check out a great interview with James Hansen on Grist. As he puts it, ‘you’ve got to cut off the coal source.’
Also posted in Coal's End |
Always on the lookout for readable books about energy sources, I was delighted to read Jonathan Hiskes’ interview (on Grist) of journalist Peter Maass, about his new book Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil.
Welcome news from Grist, here’s a sample: Very big news out of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this morning: The agency has determined that all 79 mountaintop-removal mining permits submitted to it for review by the Army Corps of Engineers would violate the Clean Water Act. After eight long years of rubber-stamp permits being issued [...]
Also posted in Coal's End |
How fascinating. Civil disobedience against coal plants is on the rise, according to Mark Engler’s superb Salon article ‘ How to kill a coal plant.’ The article focuses on the 2007 action of the Kingsnorth Six (which, according to Engler, contributed to the UK decision to shift away from coal) but then suggests mass marches [...]
Also posted in Coal's End |
Check out this recent New Republic article. China is taking advantage of its economic slowdown to shut about 7,500 small coal-fired units, apparently reducing 2% of its emissions. I don’t know whether the story is credible – China, like other countries but even more so, tries to dress up its power generation means.
Also posted in Coal's End |
Grist’s David Roberts provides a compelling recommendation of Richard Heinberg’s Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis.