Live Video: The Dirty Weather Report

Al Gore and The Climate Reality Project are spreading the truth about climate change and extreme weather with a 24 hour online broadcast featuring climate scientists, journalists and world leaders discussing the global climate crisis.

Here is live video of this important event in finding solutions to global warming.


Live video by Ustream

Recovery Act is the Number One Reason to Re-elect President Obama

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 rejuvenated plans for the Fulton Street Transit Center in lower Manhattan. The project is set for completion in June 2014. Photo credit: Josh Marks

Republicans keep falsely claiming President Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), was a massively wasteful failure. Right now the GOP is using all the money from their right-wing billionaire donors to inundate swing state voters with their anti-stimulus, pro-austerity message.

But in reality the stimulus is a smashing success. It is more than 50 percent bigger than Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and has begun to profoundly change the United States of America in ways many of us are just beginning to realize. The economic stimulus has kickstarted our transition to a 21st Century economy built to last. For example, $90 billion was pumped into the clean energy sector. To put that in perspective, a decade earlier President Clinton proposed a modest $6.3 billion clean energy initiative that was shot down. The Recovery Act is also one of the most transparent pieces of legislation in history. Contrary to the Republican lies, there is very little fraud or abuse associated with ARRA thanks to unprecedented levels of oversight. Click here to go to Recovery.gov and track how Recovery funds are being spent and report fraud, waste or abuse.

Green Traveler: Inaugural New York City Green Festival

April 21-22, 2012 -- New York City was the place to be Earth Day weekend as the first annual NYC Green Festival launched at Javits Center North on Manhattan's West Side.

The nation's premier sustainability festival hosted a successful Big Apple event as thousands packed the convention center to hear speakers such as Van Jones and Russell Simmons discuss the green economy, browse the latest eco-friendly cars from Corporate Innovator sponsor Ford Motor Company, and check out the hundreds of exhibitors promoting everything green you can think of.

Guest Post: Land Rover goes Eco-Friendly

Everybody’s going green. You see it everywhere. Just about every company is into saving the environment. So why not car manufacturers, too? In this case, SUVs. 

World-renowned 4x4 specialist Land Rover has committed itself to building fuel and emissions-efficient vehicles to the delight of environment-conscious consumers everywhere. At the Geneva Motor Show 2011, Land Rover presented its Range-e Concept development model.

Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2012: Sustainable Solutions

The annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. this year celebrated the 150th anniversary of public land-grant universities and the founding of the United States Department of Agriculture. Different land-grand universities participated in a sustainable solutions competition. These universities demonstrated their sustainability projects to the thousands of visitors to the nation's capital.

Mississippi State University showed off their EcoCAR plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, Oregon State University showcased wave energy technology and how to build sustainable structures to withstand hurricane and tsunami ocean waves, UC Davis raised awareness about the environmental threat of plastic shopping bags, University of Florida focused on sustainable water uses, the University of Tennessee demonstrated their Living Light solar-powered house, and Washington State University explained the development of different biofuel feedstocks.

Guest Post: Embracing the Sun

Artist rending of Solar Impulse's solar plane. Credit: Solarimpulse.com

By Brent Hardy

On May 24, 2012 the company Solar Impulse launched an entirely solar-powered airplane to complete the world's first solar powered transcontinental flight; a practice run, they say, for an around-the-world flight in 2014. That same month, the boat PlanetSolar completed a solar-powered trip around the world, becoming the first solar-powered vehicle ever to circumnavigate the globe.

We're living in an exciting time when the advent of the practical and economic use of solar power is now at the cusp of going mainstream. As with any beginning, these first steps will be a bit awkward and may seem at times impractical, but already we can see signs of improvement. The cost of building and installing solar panels has dropped dramatically over the past few years and people all over the world are discovering new – and sharing tried and true – ways of harnessing the power of the sun.

Science Starting to Win Climate Change Debate

Climate change convert Richard Muller with his daughter Elizabeth at home in Berkeley, California. Photo credit: AP.

Global warming is real and humans are causing it. That greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to climate change is as accepted among mainstream scientists as the earth revolving around the sun. A recently published story on climate change denial in Australian current affairs magazine The Monthly cites a survey that found 97.4 percent of climate scientists agree that "human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures."

But what about the few scientists still skeptical of climate change? They are starting to come around as evidenced by the highly publicized conversion of UC Berkeley physics professor and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory faculty senior scientist Richard A. Muller. On the well-read pages of The New York Times, Muller explained his conversion was a result of research done on the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, which concluded that global land temperatures have increased by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) over the past 250 years, including an increase of 1.5 degrees F (0.9 degrees C) over the past 50 years. And that "it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases."