America's Most Endangered Mountains

America's Most Endangered Mountains is a video series featuring interviews with the residents of Appalachia designed to inspire people to help protect America's mountains and to help support the communities that are standing up for their mountains and their rights.

Sample videos:

Visit "America's Most Endangered Mountains"

Google Earth promotes Appalachian Voices

from the series, Google Earth Heroes:

Dr. Margaret Palmer believes there's a better way

"In the early days of coal mining it was dirty, dangerous work. Thankfully modern science has found a much safer way to get our coal ... blowing the tops off of mountains!!!!" -- Stephen Colbert, Colbert Report

See video interview here

Appalachian Voices rallies against Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

the area and one of its effects.

over 500 American mountains have been destroyed in the last 40 years.

from the Appalachian Voices website,

"Mountaintop removal is a relatively new type of coal mining that began in Appalachia in the 1970s as an extension of conventional strip mining techniques. Primarily, mountaintop removal is occurring in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Coal companies in Appalachia are increasingly using this method because it allows for almost complete recovery of coal seams while reducing the number of workers required to a fraction of what conventional methods require..."

Learn more here

Smucker's new facility generates 94% of own energy

Smucker's new Chico, Calif., distribution center generates 94 percent of its own energy.

The 157,000 square foot warehouse, which recently earned LEED Gold status, has two solar arrays, as well as methane turbines and natural gas microturbines. The two solar arrays provide about 450 kilowatts of electricity, and the other systems provide another 190 kilowatts.

A total of 1,020 solar panels generate nearly 370,000 kilowatt hours a year, offsetting energy costs by 56 percent, according to a press release. In other environmental efforts, the facility has a 98.5 percent reuse/recycle rate...

Read full article here
via Environmental Leader

World's glaciers melting at accelerated pace, leading scientists say

From the Alps to the Andes, the world's glaciers are retreating at an accelerated pace - despite the recent controversy over claims by the United Nations' body of experts, leading climate scientists said today...

>> click graph to enlarge

New analyses suggests meltwater from land-based ice could lead to a sea level rise of 2.6ft by the end of this century - and possibly as much as 6.5ft.

Glacier melt is also threatening water supplies, with recent studies showing less water flowing from glaciers to the great rivers such as the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra that sustain the Indian subcontinent...

Read full article here
via The Guardian
by Suzanne Goldberg

Climate Change: good news & worse news

Good: The Himalayan glaciers will probably endure past 2035.
Bad: If we don't reverse our emissions trend soon, their disappearance
is likely to become irreversible before then.

MEMO TO THE IPCC: If you are going to review the apparently mistaken claim in your 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 — please review all of the latest scientific literature and observations on that subject AND update your equally outdated sea level rise projections.

MEMO TO MEDIA: It isn’t news that the 2007 projections by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are not accurate. The real news is that the 99% of their “mistakes” are UNDERestimates of likely impacts...

Read full article here
via Climate Progress

Climate Change's Low-Hanging Fruit

The point of the chart above is simple:

Some energy efficiency measures have a net cost and require fairly careful analysis to decide if they're worthwhile. Those things are shown on the right side of the chart. But there are lots of efficiency measures that not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but produce net cost savings at the same time. These are the low-hanging fruit of climate change, otherwise known as "no-brainers." There are tremendous savings out there for the taking...

Read full article here
via Mother Jones
by Kevin Drumm

Federal Government to Cut GHG Emissions 28% by 2020

President Obama announced on January 29 that the federal government—the largest energy consumer in the U.S. economy—will achieve a 28% reduction in its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2020. Reducing and reporting GHG emissions, as called for in Executive Order 13514 on Federal Sustainability, will ensure that the government leads by example in building the clean energy economy...

Read full article here
via The US Department of Energy

China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy

China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbins, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants...

Read full article here
via The New York Times
by Keith Bradsher

Unions Call for Science-Based Reductions in Greenhouse Gases

Three large unions have come out in favor of the science-based emissions targets called for by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)...

The Transport Workers Union (TWU) and a joint statement by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) called for a 25 to 40 percent reduction below 1990 emissions levels for developed countries by 2020...

Read full post here
via Truthout.org
by Brendan Smith and Jeremy Brecher

Warming alarms Lousiana scientists

In a letter filled with citations of peer-reviewed scientific studies, 32 scientists -- including many working on the state's coastal restoration efforts -- told Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal that there's a direct link between the rising sea levels eroding the state's coastline and greenhouse gases produced by the state's industries...

Read full article here
via Times Picayune

by Mark Schleifstein

"The nation that leads the clean economy, leads the world economy."

President Obama at his State of the Union address last Tuesday, "The nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation."

Obama also called on a strong climate bill, to help empower this economic vision. See the full address:

White Roofs Could Reduce Urban Heating

To help combat global warming and urban heating, we might just need to paint the town white.

A new modeling study simulated the effects of painting roofs white to reflect incoming solar rays and found that it could help cool cities and reduce the effects of global warming...

Read full article here
via Yahoo! News
by Live Science Staff

The Father of "Negawatts" & "Soft Energy"

Amory Lovins is an accomplished man. But among his most interesting works is coining the term, "negawatts."

From Wikipedia -- A negawatt is a unit in watts of energy saved. It is basically the opposite of a watt. Lovins argues that utility customers don’t want kilowatt-hours of electricity; they want energy services such as hot showers, cold beer, and lit rooms, which can come more cheaply if electricity is used more efficiently...

Learn more here
via Wikipedia