Published on May 29th, 2008
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Years of legal wrangling have finally produced a long-awaited report on the current and potential effects of climate change on the U.S. And it should come as no surprise that regions already hurting — Alaska and the arid Southwest — are among the areas expected to feel the greatest pain from continued climate change in the future.
The report, Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the United States, was released today by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. According to the Government Accountability Project, the study was “years overdue under a requirement of law” and was prepared only after a federal court order last year set a release deadline of May 31, 2008.
Among the report’s highlights (or lowlights, depending on your perspective):
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Published on May 20th, 2008
Gas prices are sky-high and people are hurting. Is it market speculation, tight supplies or the first throes of peak oil? And, if it’s the latter, how can civilization survive?
Well, residents of the small Alaskan capital of Juneau are showing us how. Following an April 16 avalanche that severed the city’s main power lines, Juneau found itself forced to cut its energy calories big-time literally overnight. It was that, or face energy bills double or triple or many times more than the month before. The good news: society didn’t collapse.
How did residents do it? Let’s count the ways: Read the rest of this entry »
Published on May 19th, 2008
I’ve recently witnessed a few scenes of life after peak oil, and it isn’t necessarily the Apocalypse.
In Juneau, Alaska, for example, people are proving it’s possible to change our energy-hogging ways literally overnight and still keep a community up and running. The inspiration in their case: an avalanche that severed the hydroelectric power lines serving the remote Alaska capital, cutting off about 80 percent of the city’s available electricity.
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Published on May 16th, 2008
Today is Endangered Species Day in the U.S., and the timing couldn’t be more sadly appropriate.
On the same day designated as Endangered Species Day by U.S. Senators Susan Collins (Maine) and Dianne Feinstein (California) comes news from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) that Earth has lost nearly a third of its biodiversity over the past 37 years.
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