SOTU Energy Review: All-of-the-Above Strategy

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1.27.12: NNR’s Ben Pomeroy talks in depth with energy policy blogger and NNR contributor Andrew Schenkel about the election-friendly energy agenda laid down by the President in the State of the Union.
Tags: DOE, drilling, election, Energy agenda, energy policy, Federal, green economy, Keystone, obama, oil, political, SOTU, State of the Union 2012, Tarsands
Resource:
2012 State of Union Transcript
Eco-Horror Director Larry Fessenden

1.18.12: Film director Larry Fessenden (pictured above) boasts a prolific career scaring people. Of all the horrors he been part of, Larry may be most frightened by what’s happening in real life on planet earth. Many of his films find their terror from present day ecological and resource crises, like climate change or water shortages.
When he’s not grave robbing on the screen, Larry runs the website Running Out of Road to give voice to the environmental issues and personalities that motivate (read enrage) him.
Producer Ben Pomeroy talks with Larry about horror movies as cautionary tales and how a good Hollywood scare flick can help carve some edginess into the green movement.
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Tags: apocolypse, cataclysmic, cautionary tales, director, film industry, Hollywood, horror movies, Larry Fessenden, pop culture, Running Out of Road, scare tactics
Photo:
I Sell The Dead (Glass Eye Pix)
Our Look Back at 2011

12.28.11: From the debates on federal oil subsidies, the disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant to the fight over fracking in New York State, environmental news in 2011 mirrored the contentions and unknowns also found in the economy and the world of politics.
In our year end retrospective we bring you the varied voices from some of our stories that were the news of 2011: political insiders in DC, ethanol growers in Iowa, dishwashers at Occupy Wall Street and a fisherman in Louisiana one year after the BP oil spill.
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Existential Crisis: UN Climate Change Summit

12.16.11: Climate negotiators from around the world gathered in Durban, South Africa last week to discuss how the international community might beat back global warming. Though the United Nations Framework on Climate Change summit yielded a consensus to renew the Kyoto Protocol and fund mitigation and adaptation measures in developing nations, heavy hitters like India, China and the U.S are still resistant to the policy framework. To make matters worse, Canada, one of the world’s top ten polluters, dropped out of the Protocol entirely after the conference concluded.
Brad Johnson, editor of the Think Progress Green Blog at the Center for American Progress, talks us through the existential state of affairs over the world’s only climate summit.
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Tags: adaptation, Brad Johnson, Canada, Center for American Progress, china, climate talks, developing nations, Durban, global warming, India, international community, kyoto protocol, mitigation, summit, Think Progress, UN, UNFCCC, United Nations
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UNFCC
The Last Word(s) on Fracking

12.2.11: Hundreds of people crowded an auditorium in Lower Manhattan this past Wednesday to voice their opinions on a plan to use hydraulic fracturing in order to extract natural gas in New York State.
An overwhelmingly anti-fracking crowd, that was at times raucous and rowdy, spoke urgently before the Deputy Commissioner of Environmental Conservation, in the fourth and final public hearing before the DEP’s report on hydraulic fracturing goes to the Governor’s office for review.
Producer Ben Pomeroy visited the hearing to gather some of the perspectives and stories from the front line of the fracking battle.
The public comment period through writing continues until January 11th.
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Tags: dep, Department of Environmental Protection, fracking, Gasland, Governor Cuomo, hydraulic fracturing, Josh Fox, Lower Manhattan, Marcellus Shalle, natural gas, New York State, public hearing