By Daniel J. Weiss, Guest Blogger, Mari Hernandez, Guest Blogger and Jackie Weidman, Guest Blogger on May 9, 2013 at 4:32 pm Warming-charged Superstorm Sandy affected electric grid security throughout Tri-State area. This morning, CAP Senior Fellow Daniel J. Weiss testified before the Subcommittee on Energy and Power of the Committee on Energy and Commerce about electric grid reliability. He made a strong case for confronting the elephant in the room –the impact climate change has on the reli...

All too often, along the blurry borders of civilization and the natural world, it can seem our presence must come at the detriment to local wildlife. But while there are indeed some people callused to empathy, there are still many more happy to prove that it's a human instinct to be humane.Earlier this week, a baby female elephant fell and became stuck in a muddy ditch while trailing her family in the Assam region of northern India. After hearing cries from the distressed animal, and noticing th...

It’s tempting to grade the President on a curve, but future generations won’t – if we destroy the livable climate they’ll need to feed 9 billion people. “History does not forgive us our national mistakes because they are explicable in terms of our domestic politics….  A nation which excuses its own failures by the sacred untouchableness of its own habits can excuse itself into complete disaster.”  – George Kennan, 1951. Readers have asked my opinion of Jonathan Chait’s New York magazine column:...

E-waste is a big problem (f.ex. Microsoft puts disposable wifi routers into magazine advertisement), but there is also a counter-trend that helps fight it. Over time, a lot of physical things are either being turned into software (a physical watch might now be a digital watch on the screen of a computer or phone) or there is a convergence of gadgets (1 smartphone does what dozens of different gadgets used to do).WIRED magazine has a great graphic to illustrate this: How Over 40 Gadgets Converge ...

It looks like the Giant African Snail that was discovered in Houston, Texas, was actually a Rosy Wolf Snail, which is native to North-America (it is considered an invasive species in some places, like Hawaii, but not in Texas).Turns out the big snail found in a Houston garden is beneficial, not bad. It was a rosy wolf snail, a predator of snails that devour garden plants, said Michael Warriner, invertebrate biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.Photos of the suspicious snail tipped ...

Wind power had a banner year in 2012, accounting for more new generating capacity than any other resource. Despite the boom in cheap natural gas, 42 percent of all new capacity last year was actually from wind, which clocked in at 13,131 MW in new installations for the year. The economics for wind power have only gotten more compelling, helped in no small part by the Production Tax Credit and the Investment Tax Credit creating strong investment incentives. This boom in wind power has begun to tr...

By Jessica Goad, Guest Blogger and Climate Guest Blogger on May 9, 2013 at 3:26 pm The fight over American coal exports continues to be dramatic.  Yesterday, energy company Kinder Morgan announced that it is dropping plans to build its Port Westward Project near Port of St. Helens, Oregon. The export terminal would have transported 15-30 million tons of coal from Wyoming and Montana to Asian nations. While the company attributed its decision to the logistics of the site rather than larger glo...

© Thorncrown ChapelDavid Koon at The Arkansas Times writes that Thorncrown Chapel, an iconic piece of organic architecture is under threat and uniting an unusual coalition of supporters, including "more than 50 individuals, organizations, corporations, and cities — including the American Institute of Architects and the Walmart Real Estate Business Trust."Koon writes:An odd set of corporate, municipal and grassroots bedfellows has coalesced in Northwest Arkansas around opposition to a proposed So...

They all said he couldn't do it... Tesla has released its financials for the first quarter of 2013, and while Elon Musk, the company's CEO, had said that it would be their first profitable quarter, nobody expected it to be that profitable. Analysts had predicted an average of 4 cents a share, and Tesla delivered 3 times that (net income for the quarter was a bit over $11 million)! The company has delivered 4,900 electric cars during the quarter, more than the 4,500 they expected, and consistentl...

Tesla double-header today As if things weren't going well enough for Tesla Motors today, with their blockbuster Q1 results, they've also just received a glowing review the most trusted reviewer around, Consumer Reports. CR has called the Model S the "best car they've ever reviewed" and given it the highest rating they've ever given, 99%. Check out the video below:Consumer Reports wrote:Built from the ground up as an EV, this car's overall balance benefits from mounting the battery under the floo...

Al dropped in to Toronto to talk about tar sands, Keystone, the environment and American governance.‘No such thing as ethical oil,’ Al Gore tells Toronto audienceDeclaring that “American democracy has been hacked,” former U.S. vice-president Al Gore told a Toronto audience that his countrymen needed to wake up to the special interests that have a grip on the levers of power in the U.S. Congress and are able to block legislation on a range of policy issues including his signature cause, global cl...

As we wait for President Obama and the State Department to make a decision on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, talk seems to have shifted away from why the pipeline should be rejected to what should be done in the event the project is approved. Thomas Friedman, for example, wrote that Bill McKibben and 350.org activists should "go crazy" if it is approved. Vice President Joe Biden let it be known he opposes the pipeline, but is in the minority in the administration, suggesting he's putting him...

Patty Johnson is a sort of Cameron Sinclair of product design, travelling around the world to help indigenous designers and artisans produce work that appeals to the developed world. Last year we looked at her Vodunuvo project in Haiti. Now she writes about it in Core77 in a New York Design Week Preview of her presentation at ICFF. She talks about the importance of promoting artisans and craft:All over the world, or rather the real futuristic world we live in where everything is indeed made by ...

Throughout most of human existence, population growth has been so slow as to be imperceptible within a single generation. Reaching a global population of 1 billion in 1804 required the entire time since modern humans appeared on the scene. To add the second billion, it took until 1927, just over a century. Thirty-three years later, in 1960, world population reached 3 billion. Then the pace sped up, as we added another billion every 13 years or so until we hit 7 billion in late 2011.One of the co...

As Republicans soul-search about how to align themselves with the contemporary values and concerns of the American people, global climate change apparently remains verboten. In fact, the GOP is moving farther away from its own voters on the issue, not to mention the new voters it hopes to attract. That makes Tuesday’s election of Mark Sanford to the House of Representatives even more interesting. As governor of South Carolina in 2007, Sanford was one of several Republican governors who acknowled...

Zero Republicans show up to vote on Gina McCarthy's nomination to be EPA Administrator. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee was scheduled to vote today at 9:15 on the nomination of Gina McCarthy to be the next EPA Administrator. Despite the fact that she has answered more than a thousand of the committee’s questions, Senate Republicans announced just before the hearing that they would be boycotting the vote, denying the committee quorum and postponing the confirmation hearing. The ...

© Yori AntarBuilding 'green' isn't just about using the latest and greatest technologies -- it can also be about preserving time-honored, local building traditions that respect regional cultures and have been proven to be climatically appropriate over the centuries. Striving to preserve the ancient typology of conical-shaped worok homes, Indonesian architect Yori Antar worked with the Wae Rebo community to build several new worok structures on the remote Flores Island of Indonesia.© Yori AntarAs...

© Jaymi HeimbuchEvery single bite of this salad is a new and wonderful flavor combination, depending on what lands on your fork. The delightful mix of roasted vegetables, beans, crispy lettuce, crunchy toasted almonds, smooth avocado and tangy feta cheese -- all combined with a dressing of garlic, honey and spices -- is an incredibly tasty and healthy feast.There are a few steps to making this salad, but it comes together quickly. Speed it up by making the dressing while the vegetables are roast...

© Courtney Creenan, Kyle Mastalinski, Daniel Nead, Lisa Stern, Scott SelinWhether it's from habitat loss, chemical contamination or disease, the sharp decline of bee populations in recent years has caused serious concern. Whatever it is, it's clear that wild bees need help, and it's with this aim to provide them with better habitats that architecture students at the University of Buffalo created this shiny, skyscraper-style structure in the middle of a site filled with abandoned silos.© Courtney...

© Zeit EcoIn the post, "Solar Electric Scooter Saves the Environment, Gives To Charity", we discussed how the company differentiates itself from the competition. The Solar Electric Scooter's use of solar cells and charity work separates it from the unique-looking Fido and the bamboo used on the Voltaic. Now the Zero Emission Individual Transport, or Zeit Eco, turns to music to swerve away from its competitors.According to the company's home page as well as its crowd-source site, the Zeit Eco ele...