Convention speeches, designed to introduce presidential candidates to American voters just beginning to pay attention, help define the priorities and passions of candidates and their parties.

If you were looking for more than a mention of the biggest environmental issue the planet faces, neither the Democrats nor Republicans were offering it as part of their convention rhetoric.

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If Daniel Nocera’s energy vision prevails globally, each home and business will have its own, entirely sufficient power unit, charged by the Sun.

Industry-produced greenhouse gases will be vestiges of the old order, as solar-based “personal energy” systems power everything from televisions to plug-in electric cars and produce only water as a byproduct.

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Writer, commentator, news source, and most of all critic, James Howard Kunstler combines an unforgiving disdain of America’s fossil fuel-based way of life with a scalding rejection of modern architecture, suburban zoning laws, and what he sees as much of the media’s complicity in the whole thing. A news junkie and major force behind the nascent “beyond the oil age” movement, Kunstler pulls no punches with his sharp tongue and engaging prose damning Americans’ over-reliance on their automobiles. His seemingly endless cheerless scolding doesn’t make him a pessimist, however, and certainly not a shy and retiring one. It’s just that the future he sees is a lot different from the one we have and the one that so many of his fellow citizens seem unable to see beyond.

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A voluntary market for carbon offsets has emerged in recent years in the United States that in many ways parallels the global compliance carbon market in countries that have signed onto the Kyoto Protocol.

In contrast to the strict regulatory framework governing offset markets under Kyoto’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), however, a voluntary offset market lacks consistent and universally accepted standards for offset quality.

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A ‘Sea Change’ in Findings from 1,300 Researchers?

Research scientists and journalists may be interacting lots more than generally thought, and the scientists’ experiences, at least, may be “far smoother” than generally thought.

That’s the gist of a new research report based on a survey of more than 1,300 researchers in the U.S., France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

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With the mainstream commercial media companies eliminating many hundreds of journalists’ jobs, new ventures such as the nonprofit Pro Publica, the New York-based investigative reporting organization, are trying to pick up some of the slack.

Now comes something really different: A for-profit energy corporation is starting an online video channel as “a brand-new media source,” to be staffed with people who formerly worked in conventional broadcast journalism and who will report on the very subjects the company is involved with.

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Climatologist Michael E. Mann might be forgiven for having wondered if yet another book on global climate change was warranted. Whether yet another global warming book could make a significant contribution to the field, could be different from the many - and many of them excellent - that preceded it.

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On May 13, the date of West Virginia’s presidential primary, CNN launched what the progressive group, Think Progress, called a “coal fest”.

“ISSUE #1: MAKING GAS FROM COAL: REDUCING DEPENDENCE ON OIL” flashed across the television screen as senior business correspondent Ali Velshi expounded on the prospect of converting coal into liquid fuel.

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For 28 years, Canadian writer Ed Struzik has skied, dogsledded, snowmobiled, helicoptered, canoed, and ridden icebreakers as part of his writings about the Arctic. Since long before most journalists paid the northern territories much heed, Struzik has covered the change brewing in these empty lands as his beat.

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