The Climate Action Tracker published its mid-year update of government action to address the rise in greenhouse gas emissions and concluded that the current climate crisis demands more government action as global progress is “stalling” and many countries retain “woefully inadequate” national targets.
America got more electricity from renewables in April than from coal for the first time ever. As prices for renewables continue to fall, more records like that are in the offing.
After an explosion and fire in Philadelphia last week, the owners of one of the largest oil refineries in the US announced the closure of the facility, sending prices for gasoline sharply higher.
To hear officials in the Trump administration tell it, fracking is a fantastic gift to the American people because it allows the US to be the largest oil and gas producer in the known universe. The US is pumping so much of the stuff, it now has what is being called “energy security.” Apparently no one in government has tumbled to the fact that renewable energy also provides that elusive “energy security” as well.
A new study on the hazardous gas emissions from the calamitous 2015 blowout of the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility, near Porter Ranch, CA, has found that apart from methane, a group of other hazardous pollutants escaped into the air, affecting many residents in the area. The study calls for air monitoring at underground gas storage facilities nationwide, potentially affecting thousands of sites around the country.
I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
—Douglas Adams
Days before representatives of the G20 meet in Japan, a new report has been published by the Overseas Development Institute, or ODI, which reveals these nations are spending at least $63.9 billion on coal annually.
The largest ethical investment management company has sold its shares in 5 companies it says are not doing enough to address the challenges of a warming planet. The largest of them is ExxonMobil.
US offshore wind industry sneezes, knocks out nuclear power plant in New Jersey, fossil fuel power plant in Rhode Island.
General Electric is shuttering a natural gas powered generating station in southern California 20 years before the end of its normal useful life. Competition from solar and wind power plants have made it uneconomical to operate.
