While thousands of climate change scientists, policy-makers and thought-leaders gather in Copenhagen to consider what to do about the future of our planet, most climate change skeptics are stuck on dissecting a scandalous incident that occurred in the virtual world last month.

This so-called "Climate-Gate" stems from the efforts of...

To an economist, subsidies are powerful and dangerous things. They are powerful because they work. They are dangerous because they encourage economic actors to take actions that have direct impacts that are often unanticipated and wanted, and at the expense of other positive actions that could otherwise be taken...

Earlier in September, a group of investors from around the world with over $13 trillion under management issued a statement calling on governments to agree at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December to require greenhouse gas emission reductions of 25-40% below 1990 levels by...

It is the best of times; it is the worst of times. The climate isn't changing; we must move to a sustainable way of life.

Earlier in August, a meeting called "Debunking Climate Change Myths" was held in Springfield, Missouri, bringing together about 150 figures and sympathizers of...

Lately, I've been listening a lot on my iPod to a number of pop songs from the late 1960's: "Wichita Lineman", "Love Is Blue", "Everybody's Talkin'", "To Sir With Love", "Classical Gas" and so on. These are some of the AM radio songs of my youth, sitting in the back...

Last week, I wrote a sizable check to the IRS. I wasn't exactly happy about it, but I was happy for the fact that it stemmed from a nice payday in 2008 from one of my investments. Ah, the joys of capitalism, and the obligations of responsible citizenship.

This particular...

No-one has ever accused California of being timid. Certainly, in the area of energy and environmental policies, California has long been considered the leader among the 50 United States. But, maybe, California has bitten off more than it can chew -- or at least, more than it thought it had...

For most of us in the Eastern U.S., January was a really tough month to endure. In Cleveland, it was almost ceaselessly cloudy, snowy and cold. It was really easy to get into a funk.

So, I have an iota of sympathy for Kevin O'Brien, a columnist in

About 60 miles west of Cleveland, Cedar Point is world-renowned for its scary roller-coasters. However, Cedar Point has nothing on the oil markets.

At the turn of 2007/2008, oil was at the cusp of $100/barrel -- a price that was considered a kind of mythical barrier, due to its...

Sandwiched around the election of the first African-American President of the United States, we find the debacles associated with the collapse of the international finance sector and the imminent end of the American automotive industry as we've known it for decades -- accompanied by the scurrying of would-be leaders and...

An investment banker was quoted in Sunday's Financial Times as stating that the global financial market "changed more in the past 10 days than it had in the previous 70 years." Given such a profound shattering of the status quo, I am skeptical that anyone can yet provide...

As the 2008 U.S. Presidential election season plods along, it's only natural to reflect upon how critically polling shapes the direction of government.

It's quite acceptable that polling should be used to better understand what the public is thinking. However, we're in trouble when polling is used as a...

This week at the Democratic National Convention, a labor-based group called Change to Win has been loudly trumpeting the need to "restore the American Dream".

The catch-phrase "American Dream" was apparently coined in 1931 by James Truslow Adams, who wrote that "life should be better and richer...

I never cease to be amazed by the frequency and vehemence of opinions expressed on energy and environmental matters by people who are spectacularly underinformed. So in this exposition about oil, let's first begin with a Top Ten List of clear-cut facts.

1. World oil production (which is essentially equal...

Recently, the Wall Street Journal ran a story that raised the heretical question: is the American dream of suburbanism being killed by high gas prices? Increasingly, the answer seems, yes.

Eastern philosophies teach us that our strengths are also our weaknesses. In the case of the U.S., our...

by Richard T. Stuebi

Last week, Al Gore (see video) challenged the U.S. to achieve a zero-carbon electricity supply within 10 years. Gore's talk generated a lot of press coverage, mostly positive. Going somewhat against the grain, my CleanTechBlog.com colleague Neal Dikeman wrote a very...

In early June, the U.S. Senate considered the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which proposed the establishment of a cap-and-trade system for CO2 emissions, analogous to the cap-and-trade program in place in the U.S. for acid rain pollutants since the mid-1990's.

Predictably, the bill was defeated, before...