Anti-coal

More anti-coal campaigning by the Reality Coalition:

Clean coal?

You heard it 10,000 times during the presidential debates, but let it be clear that "clean coal" in the U.S. is a myth!  As coal companies campaign to promote so-called clean coal, the Reality Coalition has launched its own campaign:

Repower America

Repower America is a plan to convert America to 100% clean electricity within 10 years. Join "We Can Solve It" for periodic updates and press releases. Here is their newest ad, which launches nationally this week:

If Barack Obama stands by his word, the next 4 (or 8) years might be just the springboard this country needs to move toward more efficient and renewable energy use and cleaner electricity.

"I strongly agree with Vice President Gore that we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels, and those are the investments I will make as President."

~ President-elect Barack Obama, July 17, 2008

Cool website

Check out this cool website someone forwarded to my brother - Unscrew America. It's all about the benefits of replacing your old incandescent lightbulbs with CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Lights), done with cool graphics and design. It is a little difficult to navigate at first, but you'll get the hang of it.

Earth Hour 2008

I just came across this today, thanks to my new "Ideal Bite" widget (see bottom of this page). Tomorrow, Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 8:00 p.m. (your own local time) is Earth Hour 2008 - an event created by the World Wildlife Fund last year in Sydney, Australia, where millions of people worldwide will shut off their lights for a full hour in an effort to make a positive impact on global warming.

So if you're home tomorrow at 8 p.m. (or, for that matter, anywhere else where you can control the lights), light a couple candles and shut off all your lights and TVs and find something to do for an hour that doesn't require the use of electricity. Tomorrow, live the "dark" green life!

A tiny home

Check this out - WORLD'S SMALLEST HOUSE!

Talk about an energy-efficient home!

Green search engines?

In 2005, a company called Heap Media created a website called Blackle. It is a version of the Google search engine displayed on a screen which is predominantly black. The theory: the black screen uses less energy than the typical white Google screen and, therefore, is a "greener" way to search the Internet. This is interesting, but it is unclear whether it really works to conserve energy or not. You're going to have to read up and come to your own conclusion. Some studies say that the black screen only reduces energy use if you are using a CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitor - those are the old, glass-screen monitors that you probably had with your Commodore 64 back in the good ol' days. Most monitors these days are LCD (liquid crystal display) and may actually use MORE energy to display the black screen. Blackle's one redeeming quality is their belief that, if Blackle is your homepage, it will serve as a reminder every time you open your Internet browser that you should be thinking about saving energy, and perhaps this will motivate you to do the little things to save energy and help the environment.

My opinion? Don't use Blackle (or any of its various spin-offs like Black-Google and Blackoogle) unless you have a CRT monitor, which you probably don't. And if you're reading this blog, you probably don't need the helpful reminder to save energy!

Here are just a few of the many people who have weighed in on the debate:
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/does-a-darkened-google-really-save-electricity-104/
http://realworldgreen.com/2007/08/09/blackle-does-it-really-save-energy/
http://ad1987.blogspot.com/2007/07/save-energy-with-blackle.html
http://blog.businessgreen.com/2007/07/blackle-correct.html