January 10th, 2012

Imagine if our nation was offered a choice of how to spend half a trillion dollars of our wealth over the next two decades.
One option would be to send $350 billion overseas to the Middle East and other oil exporting countries, and the remainder on increasing oil industry revenues.
An alternative option would be to take that half a trillion dollars and invest $300 billion directly into the U.S. auto industry, put $200 billion back into consumers’ pockets, and create half a million new jobs while cutting emissions of dangerous carbon pollution.
Is this choice just a pipe dream? Is it too simplistic a way to look at things?
Hardly.

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August 11th, 2011

Many American’s are feeling the stress of extreme heat and drought this summer, but we’re also experiencing a worsening smog problem. Most of the nation – from seaside suburbs to our national parks – has experienced health-threatening “bad air” days this year due to smog pollution, according to a new analysis of government air pollution data by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

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August 4th, 2011

Climate change is expected to lead to worsening drought conditions and greater heat extremes, along with myriad health problems. And a new web tool created by the Natural Resources Defense Council lets you see read just how badly your state could be impacted by climate change.

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February 23rd, 2011

New York City, the nation’s best networked metro area, provides the full course of transportation options. Here you can easily hop a plane, train, bus or taxi. You can live car-free (if you don’t count that taxi) and conduct a low-carbon commute, or even reside a walk away from where you work. You can fly in, you can fly out. You can commute to Boston, if you’re dedicated.

So it’s little surprise that NYC — where households average just 9,920 miles of car travel in a year — tops a new list of 15 cities that are providing residents with greener transportation systems.

The list, the result of a study the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Smart Cities project and the Center for Neighborhood Technology, was released today.

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January 24th, 2011

When he delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama will present a report card on how the nation has fared the past year, offer up an agenda that seeks to bridge our partisan divide, and share with the American people his vision of where he wants to lead the country.

The president can cover all three bases by embracing a clean-energy agenda that boosts our economy and strengthens the safeguards that protect our health, our waters, our lands and the air we breathe.

No review of 2010 can overlook one of the worst environmental disasters of our time–the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. This was a national wake-up call to break our costly and dangerous dependence on oil and move faster toward cleaner, safer, more sustainable sources of energy. Adopting this month’s recommendations by the national BP oil spill commission is a good start.

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September 2nd, 2010

More than $200 million in spending and 4,000 Virginia jobs supported by the six million visitors each year to Jamestown, Chincoteague and Shenandoah National Park are at risk if climate change remains on its current path, according to a major new report issued this week by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Among the possible changes: a loss of Chincoteague’s beach, the complete flooding by higher tidal waters of historic Jamestown Island – site of the continent’s original English settlement in 1607 – and the decline of the brilliant fall colors of Shenandoah National Park.

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July 19th, 2010

By Sasha Lyutse
Yesterday afternoon, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its evaluation of the costs and benefits of federal biofuels tax credits, including the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC), the largest U.S. subsidy for renewable energy that goes almost entirely to corn ethanol. The release comes against the backdrop of a full court press by corn ethanol industry lobbyists to push Congress to extend the VEETC and a disappointing attempt by Senator Amy Klobuchar to attach a 5-year extension of the corn ethanol tax credit to a Senate energy bill ostensibly supporting renewable energy, which we discussed here and the NRDC Action Fund discussed here.

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July 16th, 2010

By Sasha Lyutse
Yesterday afternoon, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its evaluation of the costs and benefits of federal biofuels tax credits, including the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC), the largest U.S. subsidy for renewable energy that goes almost entirely to corn ethanol. The release comes against the backdrop of a full court press by corn ethanol industry lobbyists to push Congress to extend the VEETC and a disappointing attempt by Senator Amy Klobuchar to attach a 5-year extension of the corn ethanol tax credit to a Senate energy bill ostensibly supporting renewable energy, which we discussed here and the NRDC Action Fund discussed here.

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June 9th, 2010

The Natural Resources Defense Council, and many other environmental groups, are campaigning with renewed vigor for a clean energy bill, in the wake of the ongoing BP oil disaster.

In this NRDC video, longtime conservationist Robert Redford reflects on the oil catastrophe, saying its time to recognize that self-interested oil companies will never want to give up risky oil drilling, if there’s profit to be made.

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June 3rd, 2010

While some U.S. senators struggle to find a way forward on climate action, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has stepped into the fray to call for a time out.
Murkowski, in fact, has been in the fray for a while. And while she’s not alone — many others in Congress have said they’re more concerned about slowing government regulations than slowing climate change — she has recently distinguished herself as one of the strongest opponents of controls on carbon pollution.

Murkowski, a longtime, ardent supporter of oil drilling, has become more vocal in the past year in her efforts to keep industry free of strong environmental controls. In January, she proposed stripping the EPA of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. More recently, she’s lamented that the BP oil disaster has temporarily halted exploratory offshore drilling in the arctic planned by Shell Oil for this summer; a topic that even many conservative opponents of climate action have remained silent on in the face of the ongoing historic, despoiling of the gulf.

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April 29th, 2010

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced a new “LEED for Neighborhood Development” rating system today that aims to reward communities that try to reduce urban sprawl, increase walkability and transportation options, and decrease automobile dependence.

The new certification, developed with the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Natural Resources Defense Council, hopes to encourage development within or near existing communities and public infrastructure to reduce the impact of sprawl. It is the seventh rating system for the USGBC, which certifies residential, commercial and other properties based on their environmental footprint.

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April 22nd, 2010

“I don’t remember exactly what I did on the first Earth Day 40 years ago, but I remember exactly how I felt: deeply relieved,” writes Frances Beinecke. “You have to realize, the spring of 1970 was a tumultuous time. I was a junior at Yale, but most of us were essentially on strike. We never went to class, because we were far too embroiled in the political upheaval around us. Students were up in arms about the draft. Protests against the escalation in Vietnam had reached a fevered pitch–indeed four students would be shot dead by National Guardsmen at Kent State that May. Meanwhile the National Guard had descended on the streets of New Haven because Bobby Seale, the co-founder of the Black Panthers, was on trial downtown.”

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