Greenpeace said about 500,000 Facebook users have urged the world's largest online social network to abandon plans to buy electricity from a coal-based energy company for its new data center in the U.S.

Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo sent a letter Wednesday to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg warning that the company risked its reputation and financial health if it ignored the environmental impacts of its actions.

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A nonpartisan think tank Wednesday outlined an ambitious plan to boost renewable energy development in America and placed Nevada and the West in the center of it.

The Brookings Institution proposes the federal government create and fund up to half a dozen “energy innovation centers” in the West to study solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels and nuclear energy. The centers would be a place for universities, government agencies, federally funded laboratories, military bases, utilities and companies to work together on ideas and new technology. Nevada, for example, would see UNLV involved in a center for solar development and UNR involved in a center for geothermal power.

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By MICHAEL GRUNWALD

The West, particularly Nevada, would seem to be the perfect place to focus the nation’s renewable energy effort given the wide open spaces and abundance of solar, wind and geothermal resources. But one of the difficulties developers have run into is that much of the land is federally owned and energy plants can pose a problem.

Although developments are typically planned for sites overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, energy projects can cause problems for another federal landowner — the military. Wind turbines, for example, can create problems for radar, affecting military training.

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By TOM ZELLER JR.

Blasting off mountaintops to reach coal in Appalachia or churning out millions of tons of carbon dioxide to extract oil from sand in Alberta are among environmentalists’ biggest industrial irritants. But they are also legal and lucrative.
For a growing number of banks, however, that does not seem to matter.
After years of legal entanglements arising from environmental messes and increased scrutiny of banks that finance the dirtiest industries, several large commercial lenders are taking a stand on industry practices that they regard as risky to their reputations and bottom lines.
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By JOE SCHOENMANN

Power lines connecting Northern and Southern Nevada are needed as dozens of green energy plants are being planned or built from the Amargosa Valley to Carson City.

But there’s a problem. NV Energy says it must carve out a 260-foot swath for transmission lines that would outline an area so full of ice age fossils that it is likely to be designated a national monument
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By DAVID MCGRATH SCHWARTZ

Clean-energy advocates have conjured a vision of solar panels lining the rooftops of homes and businesses, powering Nevada with a plentiful and renewable source of energy. But, they say, it will remain nothing but a vision unless the 2011 Legislature requires power giant NV Energy to purchase this homemade electricity

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By DYLAN SCOTT

Despite the protests of residents, more than 80 wind turbines, each more than 400 feet tall, could soon surround Searchlight.

On Wednesday, Clark County commissioners approved an application from Duke Energy, a national renewable energy firm, to move forward with the project. The proposal encompasses about 9,300 acres bordering Searchlight on three sides. The southern Clark County town has about 500 residents.
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Passing a major energy bill seemed virtually impossible a few weeks ago, but Democrats, bolstered by public anger over the gulf oil spill, are pushing for legislation with renewed hope of success.

A new energy bill could be shorn of its most controversial feature — the costly and complex "cap-and-trade" system, which would set a declining limit on emissions from power plants and factories and force emitters to buy permits for the release of heat-trapping gases.

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In a jocular keynote address at the American Wind Energy Association’s conference in Dallas, former President George W. Bush reflected broadly on his presidency Tuesday morning and said the nation was in the midst of an energy transition.

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SENS. JOHN F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) have provided Congress with an opportunity. Their climate bill, released last week, is imperfect. But it offers a start, very much in the right direction. Contrary to popular wisdom, acting on global warming is not going to get easier after this year's election. Legislators should seize this moment.

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In the first progress in containing the oil gushing from a blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, BP engineers on Sunday inserted a tube into a leaking pipe and began siphoning some of the oil to a drilling rig at the surface.

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I don't think there are many people left who really question that we need a major transformation in the way we produce power, the disaster in the Gulf being the latest wakeup call for anyone who was still sleeping. It was the most recent reminder that 40 years after Richard Nixon started talking about "energy independence," we're still stuck or moving backwards -- our economy constantly rattled by the volatile price of oil, our planet's climate increasingly unstable thanks to the pollution we're pumping into the atmosphere.

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The long-awaited energy bill that will be introduced in the Senate on Wednesday provides for billions of dollars in consumer refunds and tax credits to offset price hikes, while the nation tries to wean itself from foreign oil and reduce harmful emissions into the atmosphere.

The legislation, called the American Power Act, was drafted by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in consultation with business and environmental groups.

MEXICO CITY -- Washington's special climate envoy conceded Monday the U.S. may not have a climate and energy bill in place when the next major global warming conference is held in Mexico late this year, but insisted the legislation is not crucial to those talks.

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By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, May 2, 2010

To misquote Vice President Joe Biden, “This is a big deal.”

The vice president added a bit of rhetorical flourish to his statement when he whispered too loudly his opinion of the health care reform bill that had just passed Congress. He was quite clearly pleased and his excitement about the prospects of what health care reform would mean to so many people in the United States overtook reason, which would dictate prudence in front of live cameras and open mics.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on Wednesday he would work to pass energy legislation before tackling immigration reform, a strategy that might restore the bipartisan coalition behind the climate change bill push. "I am going to move forward on energy first," the Democratic senator told reporters at a news conference. "The bill's ready. I don't see why we can't do that."

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As one reader put it..."makes one wonder just how much the fossil fuel industries are paying to have such an article written, which is just a fabrication of lies and scare mongering."

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The Las Vegas Valley was built up too rapidly over the past three decades, straining natural resources and leading to land-use, water and transportation policies that no longer can be sustained, says a nonprofit group specializing in growth management.

And it must shift away from the growth-dependent industries of construction and hospitality and create policies that will diversify the economy and sustain resources for generations to come, concludes an 80-page report created by the Tucson, Ariz.-based Sonoran Institute and released Monday.

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Feb. 4 – A new survey shows that Americans hope that environmental investments will help rescue the nation’s economy.

The survey, by Allianz Global Investors, reports that 73% of those surveyed believe promoting green practices and technologies will have a positive impact. And 57% believe that the push to create green jobs will "help turn around the economy," Allianz said.

Emily Green
Chance of Rain - January 31, 2010
FEW among us will become the face of a catastrophe, but Pat Mulroy will.
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Federal Money Brings Green Jobs to Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS -- Evergreen Recycling is based in Las Vegas. The company collects and sorts trash from casinos and construction sites. They save everything they can, from drywall to carpet and metal.

Watch story here.

The Associated Press
Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010 | Las Vegas Sun

The Nevada Supreme Court on Thursday dealt a big set back to Southern Nevada Water Authority's claims to thousands of acre-feet of rural water near the Nevada-Utah line, saying the state engineer waited too long to act on dozens of water rights applications filed two decades ago.
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TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, 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.
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‘Screw Nevada’ bill supporters not ready for dump to be buried
Las Vegas Sun - Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010

Washington — After spending nearly 30 years developing Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear waste storage site, Washington is discovering it may take more than one strategic blow to kill it.

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By TOM ZELLER Jr.

COPENHAGEN — A much-anticipated global meeting of nearly 200 nations — all seeking what has so far been elusive common ground on the issue of climate change — began here on Monday with an impassioned airing of what leaders here called the political and moral imperatives at hand.

“The clock has ticked down to zero,” said the United Nations’ climate chief, Yvo de Boer. “After two years of negotiation, the time has come to deliver.”

From now until Dec. 18, delegates will try to hammer out some of the most vexing details involved in the pursuit of a global climate accord.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN and JOHN M. BRODER

COPENHAGEN — With the swift bang of a gavel on Saturday morning, a prolonged fight between nations small and large over an international pact to limit climate risks that was forged the night before by the United States and four partners came to a somewhat murky end.

The chairman of the climate treaty talks declared that the parties would “take note” of the document, named the Copenhagen Accord, leaving open the question of whether this effort to curb greenhouse gases from the world’s major emitters would gain the full support of the 193 countries bound by the original, and largely failed, 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.

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Federal Money Brings Green Jobs to Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS -- Evergreen Recycling is based in Las Vegas. The company collects and sorts trash from casinos and construction sites. They save everything they can, from drywall to carpet and metal.

Management at Evergreen says they were able to hire about 60 people last year with federal money and hope President Barack Obama will help them hire more this year.
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By SETH BORENSTEIN

With the world losing the battle against global warming so far, experts are warning that humans need to follow nature's example: Adapt or die.

That means elevating buildings, making taller and stronger dams and seawalls, rerouting water systems, restricting certain developments, changing farming practices and ultimately moving people, plants and animals out of harm's way.

Adapting to rising seas and higher temperatures is expected to be a big topic at the U.N. climate-change talks in Copenhagen next week, along with the projected cost — hundreds of billions of dollars, much of it going to countries that cannot afford it.