Climate and clean energy news and commentary
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by Ross Macfarlane on September 19, 2012The following, an excerpt of an open letter to BNSF CEO Matthew Rose, was published in Sustainable Business Oregon. We wanted to thank you for recently visiting the Northwest. We’re sorry that we didn’t have a chance to chat about the subject that brought you to our region: coal export. Read more
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by Rhys Roth on September 12, 2012On a marine wildlife cruise in Alaska recently I got to touch a sea otter pelt–it was so luxuriously soft my knees almost buckled with pleasure. A new study found that these critters are not only super-cuddly, they also play an outsized role in sucking up carbon from the atmosphere and storing it safely away in the sea. Read more
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by Rhys Roth on August 31, 2012Congratulations to the Willamette Partnership, a NBI Innovation Partner, which teamed up with the Freshwater Trust to receive a $1.5 million Conservation Innovation Grant from the US Department of Agriculture. Read more
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by Steve Whitney on August 6, 2012Lost in the current debate over how best to control greenhouse gas emissions from combustion of fossil fuels is the simple fact that it won’t be enough. Already, concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere exceed 390 parts per million (ppm), some 40 ppm above what many climate scientists consider safe levels. Read more
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by Patrick Mazza on May 15, 2012Biochar has had an interesting run over the past several years. As with so many other emerging climate solutions, biochar burst into public awareness a few years back with a wave of grassroots enthusiasm. Read more