Image Credit: US Department of Agriculture You can’t read very much about climate change before learning that 97% of scientists are in consensus about the man-made nature of the crisis. But what about the economists? A less well-known fact is that just as many economists agree on an impactful way to decrease pollution and create … Continue reading Drive Down Emissions and Put Money in Your Pocket: All About Carbon Fee and Dividend
Why Surging Renewable Energy May Revive DC Electricity
Image Credit: BFS Man (CC-BY, flickr) John D. Rockefeller had a growing problem on his hands. His strategic investments in petroleum refinement had given him a near monopoly over that industry; 90% of the market bore his name. Yet, he quickly found a limit to the growth of his business in the cost of transporting crude … Continue reading Why Surging Renewable Energy May Revive DC Electricity
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How we Compensate Communities for Hosting our Clean Energy Future Matters
The history of energy development in the United States has always been an exceptionally individualistic affair. For instance, the wildcatters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century applied a winner take all mentality to their oil production. According to the Rule of Capture, if you’re the first to exploit a resource, you own that … Continue reading How we Compensate Communities for Hosting our Clean Energy Future Matters
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Climate Change and Obesity Rates Share Both Causes and Solutions
Can we talk about intractable social problems for a second? I mean those really complex, sticky, multi-faceted, turbulent, wicked problems that have don’t have solutions so much as they have a general haze of caveats. Perhaps they have obvious, surface level solutions. But buried underneath that thin promise of simplicity is a labyrinth of asterisks. … Continue reading Climate Change and Obesity Rates Share Both Causes and Solutions
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The Re-Reemergence of Energy Efficient Houses
We used to have a simple and poignant idea: that structures should be built to harmonize with their surroundings. We took the ideas of our ancestors, people who never knew about electricity, air conditioners, or on-demand-hot water, and incorporated their inherent morality into our own spaces. Then Americans cast it aside our post-war, 1950s scramble … Continue reading The Re-Reemergence of Energy Efficient Houses
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Clean Energy’s Corporate Responsibility to the Cultural Landscape
More and more companies are popping into existence on the booming clean energy market. To assist in their projects, they employ an increasing number of experts. Lawyers to work out land leasing contracts. Press relations experts to cast their energy project in the best light possible. And, of course, surveyors to aid in construction. But … Continue reading Clean Energy’s Corporate Responsibility to the Cultural Landscape
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The Environmental Quagmire of Nuclear Power
Nuclear power is in a bit of a bind. With powerful fossil fuel lobbies on one side and anti-nuclear groups on the other, some spectators feel that the U.S. nuclear industry is destined to collapse. Profitability issues, ever present safety concerns, and difficulty providing a per unit price on par with natural gas and wind … Continue reading The Environmental Quagmire of Nuclear Power
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NIMBY and the Social Gap Collide
We need to train ourselves to see our new, clean power plants not as an unsightly necessity, but as a source of local pride and autonomy.
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Community Solar Can Overhaul Utility Assistance Programs
Complacency might well be the most insidious force in the world today. The cessation of the attempt; failing to reach further for what is better. Never yearning to remix and remake our world for the future. Or, just sitting back and failing to acknowledge when the changes that are happening around us are recursive for … Continue reading Community Solar Can Overhaul Utility Assistance Programs
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The Epitaph of NIMBY
"How dare you stick your liberal-loving, clean-energy-producing, scenic-view-destroying wind turbines on my prime oil land!” Or something like that. I think that’s what I was expecting to hear anyway. For the past year and a half I have been wrestling with an idea that I have come to call energy identity. Having gone to grad … Continue reading The Epitaph of NIMBY
Grant Samms 