Energy

Finding innovative solutions to supplying efficient, clean, safe, renewable and reliable energy for electrical power, transportation, heating and cooling. We look at problems created from the addiction to dirty fossil fuel energy, mountaintop removal and ecosystem disruption, global climate change, severe air and water pollution, and community dislocation and pollution, Extreme methods such as hydraulic fracturing (fracking), tar sands, hydroelectric dams and other damaging methods and sources are examined.

TThomas Fire 2017, Ventura County
Climate, Environmental Issues

Confronting Wildfire: Retrofit Communities, Not Forests

As California continues with massive wind-driven, high-intensity wildfires that often turn deadly, the governmental and institutional response has been to thin forests and “grind up vegetation” to fight fires. Naomi Pitcairn points to a movement by plant community and wildfire experts led by the Richard Halsey of the Chaparral Institute to focus on protecting vulnerable communities rather than trying to control nature, which now faces extreme heatwaves and droughts from an unpredictable greenhouse-gas-warmed climate.