Green Options

Are they still? After climate change compromise, inevitable escalation in Afghanistan, and little movement on gay rights, is the House health care bill’s abortion amendment a bridge too far for progressives?

Obama discussed a big project long overdo and sorely needed today — modernizing the US electric grid. But it is more than discussion. $3.4 billion in Recovery Act funding is going towards this new project.

This is the most money ever awarded for clean energy in a single day from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act!

Obama spoke at the opening of the Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center (the nation’s largest PV electricity center) to announce and discuss the various benefits of this project.

Last week, Fisker Automotive co-founder and CEO, Henrik Fisker, said that his company would very shortly be announcing where project Nina—the company’s upcoming $48,000 plug-in hybrid—would be built. The statement led to all sorts of rumors, but speculation had been growing that the chosen manufacturing spot was a closed GM plant in Delaware.

Speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today, U.S. President Barack Obama threw strong support behind clean energy and technology, touting America’s history of innovation and not shying away from problems.

The spotted seal, a sea ice-dependent Arctic species, has been denied Endangered Species Act protection by the Obama Administration.

Disappointment: The Center for Biological Diversity has announced that the Obama administration denied Endangered Species Act protection for the spotted seal, a species whose habitat is rapidly melting away due to global warming.

Olympia Snowe’s support of the finance committee draft puts health care back in play, but without a public option. The Graham-Kerry compromise climate bill would start to cap carbon, but also allow coal to cash in. Will progressives settle for incrementalism?

Time-traveling to 2010 reveals how some of Washington’s worst-kept secrets will catch up with President Obama and cripple his climate agenda.

President Obama was just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for reasons including his stand on climate change. Has his environmental record justified this award?

700 people stripped naked in French vineyards this week. Why? To try to influence world leaders to do more regarding climate change.

Failure to read the field on Chicago’s Olympic bid begs the question: who is counting votes for President Obama? The White House will need a much better ground game if the US is going to lead the world on climate change.

Al Gore and Dr. R.K. Pachauri (IPCC) under the Mahatma’s words!

Today is the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi - regarded as ‘Father of the Nation’ by the Republic of India and a ‘Global Peacemaker’ by the United Nations; so much so that this day is also celebrated as the International Day of Non-Violence. The Mahatma has also been the inspiration for US President Obama who believes that America has its roots in Gandhi’s India because the teachings he shared with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. helped change U.S. society through the civil rights movement.

Now, with the world facing a climate crisis and already on the crossroads of equity and/in development, it is time to resurrect and revive the Gandhian principles of simple living-high thinking, participatory governance, etc. at the global level.