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President Obama has announced he is nominating Gina McCarthy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. McCarthy’s track record of standing up for clean air, climate action, and public health shows that we can count on her to protect our environment and communities.[read more]

Last week I wrote about a new analysis by NRDC, The Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters of gasoline use across the country, specifically comparing counties to one another to determine which are sponging up most gasoline and therefore literally driving our oil addiction.There was considerable interest in a map of national...[read more]

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Since returning from Rio, I have already participated in a number of debriefings about the Rio+20 Earth Summit. I am pleased to see the interest, but dismayed to find many people have already accepted the message that the Summit had been a “flop” or a “failure.” Focused on the conference’s uninspired “outcome document,” most observers...[read more]

After a year of Racing to Rio, I was suddenly not sure whether I would be able to travel there as scheduled this Monday night.  We've been long envisioning and advocating for a different kind of Earth Summit this June in Rio - one that would produce real action and accountability (here, here, here...[read more]

“Never let injustice shut you up. When you see injustice you must stand up. It’s going to hurt sometimes. It’s going to cost you something. But you can never, never allow injustice in your presence and sit silently by and let it happen. You cannot do that.” – Gulf resident Linda St. Martin from Stories from the Gulf.When BP’s Deepwater...[read more]

If I had to describe the theme of my upcoming book with just one phrase, it would be “There is no free lunch in our energy options.” Sometimes the costs are obvious, as when an oil spill occurs or a nuclear accident happens. Other times, the costs are not so obvious, but the trade-offs are always there.[read more]

Looks like the Sierra Club is in hot water! What do you think about the controversy?[read more]

Well, that didn't take long. The administration issued its decision denying the Keystone XL Pipeline application today, rather than using the remaining 34 days in the Congressionally mandated timeline to attempt to find a better solution. This is a prime example of what frustrates so many Americans of all political affiliations about how...[read more]

Smithsonian Magazine has posted some unusual portraits of jolly Saint Nick and asked readers to vote for the Scariest Santa.  Here’s my choice:                               ...[read more]

When I worked in Scotland, one of my managers was a wise Englishman named Graham Walker. As with many people whose paths I have crossed in my life, some nuggets of wisdom were transferred from Graham into my long-term memory. One of the things that stuck with me was Graham’s push for decisiveness. He would tell me “Just make a decision and move on. We have a business to run here.” Graham would say that most of the time the decisions would prove to be correct, and when they weren’t we would live with them or correct them down the road. (And of course if a person frequently makes incorrect decisions, then they can be replaced with someone who makes better decisions). But his point was that you can’t live in fear of making the wrong decision, because then nothing gets done.[read more]

Peter Lehner, Executive Director, New York City It should come as no surprise that fossil fuel companies are trying to discredit their biggest competitors: the clean energy industry. Together with their allies in Congress, they are trying to use the failure of one solar company to paint the entire renewable sector as a dangerous risk....[read more]

A news item concerning last week's release of the National Petroleum Council's "Prudent Development" report referred to a recommendation supporting a national tax on carbon. That caught my attention. Given the NPC's makeup, a consensus on such a controversial issue would be surprising. The actual text of the report proved somewhat less dramatic on the climate policy front, but no less worthwhile for its comprehensive assessment of the abundance of North American hydrocarbon resources, as well as the development approach "necessary for public trust, protection of health, safety and the environment, and access to resources." The report doesn't just focus on macro concerns about climate change and other environmental issues, but also on timely details such as the methane emissions, water and land-use impacts involved in shale gas production and other resource development.[read more]

In the last few weeks, it seems like every other day there’s been a different negative story about jobs in the new clean economy. I responded to an especially bad one in the Times, but I’ve seen several more since.[read more]

   What have you done lately about climate change? In the last two weeks, about 700 Americans – with more to come – have been arrested in front of the White House, calling on President Obama to block the construction of the $7 billion, 1700-mile Keystone pipeline project that will bring Canadian tar sands oil to largest...[read more]

The most recent Green Scissors report is out, recommending hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies that could be cut to reduce the budget deficit and improve our environment.  Green Scissors provides a host of useful proposals to save tens of billions of dollars annually by eliminating unnecessary, environmentally harmful...[read more]