Keith Harrington

In case you missed it, scientists at Harvard and Yale released yet another study in April demonstrating the widening disconnect between public attitudes on clean energy and the rhetoric and policy choices emanating from Washington.

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found...

If measured by the turnout at the rally at the Annapolis state house yesterday, of all the issues confronting the Maryland General Assembly as it reconvenes this week, offshore wind power enjoys the most energetic public support.

Maintaining the grassroots momentum from a statewide series of packed "Wind...

A video from day 14 of the Occupy Wall Street protests shows an impressively huge crowd flowing through the arches of the NYPD headquarters in New York City. The crowd is chanting: "The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching!" While that may not...

When does a cause become a movement? When does it graduate from political advocacy into a true socio-political phenomenon? The answer: when it evolves from a mere idea in people's minds or an impulse in their guts into a part of who they are; when it's not just protests and...

Three years ago, I spent a number of weekends going door to door in Virginia urging people to vote for our president. In that campaign I found a sense of pride, a sense of excitement, a sense of energizing virtue.

This weekend, I spent a good chunk of time training...

"We need to balance the budget in order to grow the economy." In the midst of the federal debt-ceiling food fight, this may be one of the only ideas both political parties can more or less agree on. And coincidentally, it may also be one of the best examples of...

The war over America's coastal-energy future has officially begun, and the result could determine whether we see wind turbines or catastrophic oil spills along our coastlines in coming years.

The opening salvo came in early July, when everyone's favorite climate-hating, fossil-fuel-loving industrialist villains, the Koch brothers, released a so-called "cost-benefit...

In the four months since the ouster of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, the prospects for the emergence of a flourishing Egyptian democracy have clearly dimmed a bit. But the ultimate cause for concern isn't abuse by the military junta or the specter of ongoing sectarian division...

The uprisings in the Middle East and the growing austerity-induced unrest among workers in the US and Europe have provided new hope for environmental movement leaders who for years have struggled to mobilize the public to confront the looming catastrophes of growth-capitalism.

A good example is climate leader and

What role should art play in efforts to inspire people to fight climate change? As the climate movement struggles to regain its bearings and look for new tools to reinvigorate itself after the failures of the 111th Congress, Copenhagen and Cancun, this...

Earlier this month, environmental and clean energy activists, as well as coastal communities breathed a much needed sigh of relief when the Obama administration reversed last spring’s reckless decision to open up new offshore areas to oil drilling. Now, thankfully, the coastlines of the Pacific, Atlantic and the...

After the massive buildup and colossal letdown around last year's landmark global climate talks in Copenhagen it can be tough to see the promise in this year's Cancun round of talks. But despite the gloom of low expectations, climate advocates have found a few bright spots on which to center...

When the US Climate Action Partnership formed a few years back, I thought it was too good to be true -- oil companies and big corporate polluters coming to the table with environmentalists to craft a cap-and-trade bill. Turned out I was right. The result of this unlikely...

If there’s one thing you can say about President Obama it’s that he certainly hasn’t given his erstwhile fans on the left a shortage of things to keep scratching their heads over. One of the biggest perennial question marks hanging over his administration has been his failure to lead on...

By now the corpse of the climate bill has been so thoroughly autopsied, that examining it any further seems almost inhumane. A whole army of coroners have weighed in, suggesting an array of possible causes of death: Republican obstructionism, failed presidential leadership, a weak climate movement, the...

We've all heard that we're addicted to oil. But in the wake of the BP spill we might do well to take the oil-as-a-drug metaphor a little more seriously. For starters we need to understand that deepwater oil is the really bad stuff, the petrochemical heroin -- high risk, costly,...

If in the wake of the President's flaccid oval office speech there are still any doubts lingering in anyone's mind about whether the administration is planning to use the spill as a chance to unleash a game-changing energy policy strategy, a recent DNC oil-spill messaging briefing...

There have been a lot of deeply disturbing images and stories to emerge from the BP spill: the dead workers, the oil-covered wildlife, and the gulf-coast families whose lives and livelihoods have been devastated. But few aspects of the spill are as deeply disturbing in terms of their implications for...

Last week -- a full six weeks after the BP rig explosion killed 11 workers and initiated the slow painful murder of the Gulf Coast economy and ecology -- it was thrilling to hear that our ever-watchful federal government had finally decided to launch an investigation into whether...