In this op-ed, I look closely at Exxon Mobil’s outreach to shareholders on the eve of its May 25 annual meeting. What I find is a high wall of resistance to reforms that might bring greater transparency or accountability to a company that has long obfuscated the risks and causes of climate change.
Thanks to the Big Dig tunnel project, more car commuters than ever stream into downtown Boston, yet promised investments in public transit have been delayed, downsized, or canceled. This letter welcomes the State’s approval of a stripped-down Green Line extension through underserved, overcrowded Somerville and surrounding communities.
In this letter, I question whether Graham Allison and William Tobey’s call for greater vigilance in protecting nuclear plants will be sufficient to meet growing threats in a politically unstable world.
Power from the sun is surging in the United States. Realizing its vast potential invites us to make creative but careful use of our built environment and open lands. The Environmental Forum is published by the Environmental Law Institute, www.eli.org.
This letter points to a few of the gaping holes in venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s op-ed, “The New Atomic Age We Need.”
In this letter to the editor, I take issue with Joshua Goldstein and Steven Pinker’s op-ed, which much too readily embraces nuclear power as “the world’s most abundant and scalable carbon-free energy source.”
The obstacles that utilities and their political allies are throwing in the way of distributed solar generation in the Sunshine State are explored in this op-ed.
Here I make the case for responsibly sited utility-scale solar power plants on our open lands – a position largely shared by Erica Brand of the Nature Conservancy but hotly contested by Janine Blaeloch of the Western Lands Project.
This article first appeared in Yale Environment 360 as “In Clash of Greens, a Case for Large-Scale U.S. Solar Projects,” on August 24, 2015 (see below).
This interview explores the steps being taken to make solar power more affordable, the “death spiral” that utilities fear as distributed solar generation begins to encroach on their revenue base, and other current issues raised in Harness the Sun.
In making solar power a mainstream source of U.S. electricity, can we afford to rely only on rooftops and parking lots, or do we need to extend our reach beyond the built environment? This article explores what is involved in building large-scale solar plants on America’s farmland and natural open spaces.
Huge clean energy prospects await us if we are willing to look anew at the wastelands we have long shunned as best forgotten. In this piece, I reflect on the solar power potential that lies hidden behind the forbidding fences and “No Entry” signs of America’s brownfields.
Both Hillary Clinton and President Obama have unveiled clean energy plans that their critics call unrealistic. But the truly amazing thing is how reachable those goals are.
This letter to the editor calls for converting dead and dying industrial sites across America into renewable energy powerhouses.
Letter to the editor taking issue with Daniel C. Esty’s op-ed, “Bottom-Up Fix,” in which he questions the value of global negotiations, and certain national policies, as means of combating climate change.
Letter to the editor pressing for a long-overdue increase in the federal gasoline tax.
Mitt Romney’s rallying cry for “clean coal” rings hollow when viewed in the context of his call for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to be stripped of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Since carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants are the greatest single contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, how does Romney propose to rein in these dangerous pollutants? My critique of Romney’s positioning on climate change and U.S. coal use also appeared as an op-ed in the Des Moines Register on October 23, 2012.
“Ruin and Revival” is the theme of this season’s issue of Terrain.org. Tapping into the happier half of this theme, the journal includes an updated version of Harvest the Wind‘s opening chapter, which explores the benefits that wind power has brought to a remote rural community in north-central Kansas.
In this interview, I discuss some of the factors propelling wind power forward in North America, along with the ways in which a widely perceived super-abundance of conventional energy resources hampers our progress toward a more sustainable energy future.
In his speech before the Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney derided President Obama for his concern about climate change. Ignoring recent federal studies pointing to renewable energy's vast potential, Romney chooses to base his recipe for "North American energy independence" on the unbridled exploitation of oil, gas, and coal resources, stripping the federal government of its control over mineral development on U.S. public lands. He also calls for "aggressively" opening up America's ocean waters to mineral exploitation.
