By John DeFore

Over the last few years, moviegoers may have come to expect that any documentary pairing scientists and ice caps will be a scare-fest or a sermon — a big-screen effort to hammer home the urgent need to take action countering climate change.
Not so with Encounters at the End of the World, a film [...]

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By Nima Kapadia
Jobs in renewable energy are increasing worldwide and causing the coal industry to distribute pink slips, according to a Worldwatch Institute study.
The report, written by Worldwatch senior researcher Michael Renner, estimates that 2.3 million people are working in renewable energy jobs - either directly or indirectly. From that number:

1 million work in biofuels
794,000 work in [...]

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By John DeFore

Proposals to solve the planet’s CO2 woes through sequestering the problematic emissions — pumping them into some hole in the ground where they can’t affect the atmosphere — raise numerous concerns for skeptics. Won’t the stuff leak out, wasting the fortune we spent on sequestering, and leaving us worse off than we would [...]

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San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral will install a state-of-the-art solar photovoltaic power system with the help of $65,000 from Pacific Gas and Electric Company, city and church officials have announced. PG&E said its donation to Grace Cathedral is part of the company’s $7.5 million commitment to increase solar power in San Francisco.
“We’re working to make [...]

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First branch banking, then online banking, now for act three: Keeping your green in a vault known for its green.
Two Philadelphia bankers with notable environmental experience have announced the formation of e3bank, believed to be the first green “triple bottom line” bank on the East Coast. Everything from the organization’s infrastructure to its product and [...]

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By Tom Kessler
Colorado developers have announced what they say is the country’s largest net-zero energy, master-planned community in Arvada, Colo., a suburb of Denver. Geos Neighborhood, which will begin infrastructure construction this fall, will feature 250 residences and can generate enough renewable energy to supply 100 percent of the annual energy needs of the entire [...]

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By John DeFore

Conservation minded farmers might naturally assume it’s wise to get the most out of what’s available; if post-harvest waste material can be used in biofuel production, it seems to make financial and ecological use to sell it.
Not necessarily, according to a scientist at Washington State University who is urging farmers in her [...]

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By John DeFore

The collection of world leaders known as G8 may be taking baby steps on cutting greenhouse emissions (the Union of Concerned Scientists called their recent meeting a “sideshow”) with its goal of a 50 percent reduction by 2050 instead of the 80 percent most scientists agreed is needed.
This week Exelon, an electric-energy [...]

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By Barbara Kessler
Wal-Mart Stores is joining the Global Forest & Trade Network (GFTN), World Wildlife Fund’s initiative to save the world’s most valuable and threatened forests. The giant retailer also announced this week that it is moving toward making some of the jewelry it sells meet standards for sustainability and social responsibility.

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ROSEMEAD, Calif. — Southern California Edison (SCE) has begun installing solar panels at the first of approximately 150 Southern California commercial rooftops that eventually will make up SCE’s two-square-mile solar generation project — the largest solar panel installation in the world, according to the energy company.

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By John DeFore
In what is said to be the “largest conservation commitment in Canadian history,” Ontario has set aside an area of forest that is almost the size of the United Kingdom.
On Monday, the province’s Premier Dalton McGuinty announced that, as part of its Far North Planning initiative, it would “permanently protect” an area [...]

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By Harriet Blake

An engineering team at MIT has developed a new solar concentrator that doubles as a window and generates more electricity with fewer solar cells than typical solar panels — moving toward the day when on-site solar power might make fiscal sense for homeowners.

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