The scheduled start of drilling this month by China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) in Iran’s South Pars gas field could be both a harbinger and explanation of much wider geopolitical developments. First of all, the $5 billion project – signed last year after years of foot dragging by western energy... » read this article

More than half (27) of the nation's 50 worst power plants for mercury emissions increased their mercury emissions from 2007 to 2008 (the latest year for which data is available), according to a new report from the nonprofit and nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). The six leading U.S. power suppliers... » read this article

Billion dollar refineries are closed in one part of the world, while others open elsewhere. This is the craziness of the global capitalist economy. It wastes huge amounts of material and human resources, whereas these same resources could be used in a global plan to develop the economy in way... » read this article

Editor's note: Whether or not the Bloom Box is technically viable - who's to say? But we do note one element of Stahl's report - the complications imposed by capitalism, competition, patents, etc., on getting innovative ideas like Sridhar's to market. The last thing the venture capitalists and corporations like... » read this article

Obama’s provision of $54 billion in loan guarantees to the nuclear industry will cost Americans much more than the probable 50% default rate that the Congressional Budget Office anticipates. While the federal government will guarantee the profits of investors, rate payers will suffer the inevitable rate hikes. Higher electric rates... » read this article

Editor's Note: In the following article, Robert Alvarez responds to Daniel Indiviglio's praise of Obama's proposal for new nuclear energy plants in the the United States, Five Reasons to Cheer Obama's Ambition, published in The Atlantic on February 16. We have edited Alvarez' article to include all of Indiviglio's comments... » read this article

Although it seems a bit like a dog-bites-man story, the New York Times reported Rick Perry (R-TX) has joined with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to regulate carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. As the Center for Media and Democracy has documented on... » read this article

As Vermont seethes with radioactive contamination and the Democratic Party crumbles, Barack Obama has plunged into the atomic abyss. In the face of fierce green opposition and withering scorn from both liberal and conservative budget hawks, Obama has done what George W. Bush could not---pledge billions of taxpayer dollars for... » read this article

Johann Hoffmann started patenting inventions to protect the environment while still a young boy in his native Austria. His first—created when he was just 14—was a buoy system to contain oil spills in the ocean, a system that's still being used today. Hoffman's work eventually led him to Brazil, where... » read this article

Environmental NGO's have been uncritically thumping the green tech funding plank and they're generating funding that could be harder to hold onto than a fistful of sand in the Iraqi oilfields. There's a coup underway in the environmental movement. But the golpistas (coup-makers) aren't exactly the usual suspects. They're not... » read this article

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration may soon guarantee as much as $18.5 billion in loans to build nuclear reactors to generate electricity, and Congress is considering whether to add billions more to support an expansion of nuclear power. These actions come after an extensive, decade-long campaign in which companies and... » read this article

If your kid accidentally blew apart a building, would you give them less supervision? This hands-off approach is exactly what the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is doing by giving the contractors who manage the nation's eight nuclear weapons sites (Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National... » read this article

The promotional material from Big Green Energy, aka Biomass Gas & Electric, presents biomass as “clean, renewable energy”, sustainable and green. The U.S. Department of Energy uses the terms “clean and renewable” when introducing visitors at its website to the topic. But is it accurate to describe the repeated removal... » read this article

Copenhagen, Kingdom of Denmark Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, friends, I promise that I will not talk more than most have spoken this afternoon. Allow me an initial comment which I would have liked to make... » read this article

Wahleah Johns grew up near the coal mines of the Black Mesa region of Arizona and experienced first-hand the toll that mining takes on people, the land and the groundwater. Her community, Forest Lake, was one of several communities atop Black Mesa, where Peabody Energy ran the largest strip mining... » read this article

At first glance, the Copenhagen climate summit seems like a Salvador Dali dreamscape. I just saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu being followed by a swarm of Japanese students who were dressed as aliens and carrying signs saying "Take Me To Your Leader" and "Is Your Species Crazy?". Before that, a group... » read this article

The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill. Host Annie Leonard introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the "devils in the details" in current... » read this article

By now we know that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory has been built on a mixture of hype and massaged data. Various carbon tax schemes have been put forward, even unprecedented proposals for a world wide taxation authority to be overseen by the UN. Does it follow that the primary... » read this article

In the poor, but mineral-rich mountains of the eastern United States known as Appalachia, coal millionaire Don Blankenship hosts a rally for “Friends of America” to hear country music and “learn how environmental extremists and corporate America are both trying to destroy your jobs.” On the other side of the... » read this article

Momentum is building to block new coal-fired power plants and end mountaintop removal mining. Is there enough political will to make the break? Patrick O’Hara, who works next door to a coal-burning power plant in Chicago, was recently diagnosed with asthmatic bronchitis brought on, he believes, by breathing in pollution... » read this article