Public transit ridership is up, but no one’s talking about a better system

But how long will they wait for infrastructure improvements? Photo: Sharat Ganapati One year ago, as America prepared for the...

Umbra on the impacts of biking

Dear Umbra, A couple of your recent columns have been about this novel idea of biking as the end-all in...

A quick read on green lifestyle magazines

Choices are good, but good choices are better. Periodically, I find myself wandering the ever-expanding magazine aisles at local newsstands...

New Nature Conservancy prez chats about jumping from Goldman Sachs to the green scene

The stereotypes of biz-begrudging enviros and planet-pillaging business leaders were upended years ago. These days, green groups and corporations team...

Let’s make all jobs greener with ‘climate quality standards’

Good Jobs First held its first national conference May 7 and 8, 2008, near Baltimore.

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"Green my job."

As I track the emerging "green jobs" debate about renewable energy, energy independence, and green pathways out of poverty, I am struck by how disconnected it seems from progressive tax policy. There are some large "policy forks in the road" being taken, although environmentalists seem unaware they are making choices. As an antidote, I offer two observations and a trial balloon.

Observation #1: Some new energy proposals are corporate copycat

Some green-jobs policy proposals call for new economic development subsidies to promote the construction of manufacturing facilities for making renewable energy products. However, the average state already has more than 30 different economic development subsidy programs, and companies routinely get 8 or 10 subsidies in a single deal.

Manufacturing has long been the most coveted kind of jobs investment. Build a windmill gearbox factory in a major industrial state in America today and it will be showered

CO2 released from disappearing permafrost must be factored into climate projections

What is the point of no return for the climate -- the level of CO2 concentrations beyond which catastrophic outcomes are virtually unstoppable?

No one knows for sure, but my vote goes for the point at which we start to lose a substantial fraction of the tundra's carbon to the atmosphere -- substantial being 0.1 percent per year! As we saw in my last post, frozen away in the permafrost is more carbon than the atmosphere currently contains (and much of that is in the form of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide).

What is the point of no return for the tundra? A major 2005 study ($ub. req'd) led by NCAR climate researcher David Lawrence found that virtually the entire top 11 feet of permafrost around the globe could disappear by the end of this century.

A brief primer on variable vs. fixed costs

For those of us in the power industry, media discussions of the economics of power generation reveal an almost complete misunderstanding of how power is priced. Depending on our vested interests, we may find this either frustrating or beneficial -- but in all cases, it's false.

Herewith I attempt to explain from whence the confusion arises -- and why it is so critical for the clean energy community to understand this math and its consequences ... and to more accurately articulate the economics of those options we prefer.

Getting distracted

There the World Health Organization goes again: Millions of Asians could face poverty, disease, and hunger as a result of...

Behavioral quirks make taxes a tough sell

Tom Friedman is in full-on green mode these days, which is a welcome change from his writing on Iraq. And...