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.

Santa Barbara wildfire, Jim Stoicheff
Climate, Environmental Issues

Extreme Winds and Wildfires, On Overcoming California Climate Chaos

Jack Eidt writes on the California wildfires and their dangerous connection with climate change, melting of Arctic sea ice, and the drying out of the US West Coast. We must reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, get cracking on a just transition to an economy based on clean, efficient, renewable energy, and start making our homes and lives more extreme-climate-resilient.

Chevron, Richmond, cap and trade
Climate, Politics and Advocacy

Jerry Brown Passes Cap and Trade Written by the Oil Industry

California extended its Cap and Trade system until 2030, a symbolic move that actually allows grave concessions to the oil industry, ties the hands of local agencies ability to regulate greenhouse gases, and threatens both the state’s climate goals and the health of communities, ecosystems and the planet. RL Miller unveils the ugly political process where the Jerry Brown had the oil industry write the bill and forced the rest to go along.

spent nuclear fuel dangers, San Onofre Nuclear Plant
Nuclear

San Onofre: Beachfront Leaky Nuclear Waste Facility Underway

San Onofre Nuclear Plant, on the coast of California, is busy building a nuclear waste dump for 1,600 tons of spent fuel on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. Most U.S. nuclear power facilities store highly radioactive waste in thin-walled canisters (mostly 1/2-inch thick) that both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Department of Energy (DOE) admit cannot be inspected (on the outside or inside), cannot be maintained, repaired, and can crack and leak in the short-term.