As I sit here looking out onto the beautiful blue ocean on the beaches of the Dominican Republic, I think about the millions of Americans like me who traveled thousands of miles this holiday vacation. The rise in airfare hasn’t seemed to make a visibile dent in throngs of tourists taking advantage of the warm Carribean sun. While I diligently purchased a carbon offset for my flight, how much does that really reduce the impact that my trip made? Can we continue sustain this kind of global travel for our own pleasure?

Tad Fettig, director of the critically acclaimed series Design ‘e2′ on the PBS network, recently sat down with an interviewer from wired.com to discuss Sustainable Transportation and how to best implement transportation models that encourage the smallest emissions of greenhouse gases and the least amount of environmental degradation.

Walmart has started a Green Jobs Council. We’re officially saved. Seriously though, we are seeing some incredible growth on the green jobs front in America. Could you imagine, America, in it’s current slump, without the prospect of massive numbers of green-collar jobs to help give us at least a glimpse of a better economic future?

The recent coal-ash disaster in Harriman, Tennessee has sparked new controversy over the effective storage of coal power plant fly ash, and whether that ash poses a health threat to nearby humans and the environment. Scientists have known for years that coal ash contains several heavy metals, including arsenic, chromium, lead, and selenium, which are obviously known as heavy carcinogens. The metals and chemicals are also known to cause significant neurological damage in humans and most animal species. Why then have we not regulated the disposal of toxic coal ash?

The Green Communities Act of Massachusetts is a sweeping piece of legislation slated to fully take effect in the coming months. Passed in 2007, this energy and environmentally focused act promises to make Massachusetts a leader in addressing climate change and energy independence. All of the regulations are currently being hashed out by the public and other stake holders with the goal being to have all the nuances of the act agreed upon so the regulations can be put into practice in the new year. While we could write a book on all the great, good and (few) not so good aspects of the act, for this series of posts we are going to focus on the changes to Net Metering as it pertains to distributed generation.

Although you may or may not agree with Obama’s philosophies and policies, one thing is certain: He was able to utilize the internet to formulate a fundraising effort like no presidential candidate before him. This type of grassroots movement would not have been possible 15 years ago without the internet and the ability to disseminate information as easily and cost effective as it is today.

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about a potential federal stimulus package that will rival President Eisenhower’s massive investments in highway infrastructure during the 1950s. The Interstate Highway System (read an interesting viewpoint on the highway system here) from that era launched America into living model that is economically and environmentally unsustainable; we’re finally finding that out now. During the 50s and 60s, middle class Americans fled urban centers and flocked to rural farmland areas to live in single family homes accessible only by automobile.

Remember when you were a little kid, watching t.v. with your parents and asking, “Daddy, what does coal do?” And he goes, “Well son, just watch the advertisement during the next commercial break, paid for by the coal lobbyist group.”

Me neither; maybe it’s because I grew up without t.v., or maybe it’s because these ads NEVER EXISTED BEFORE!

The psychological barrier of 100 dollars has now been broken in the other direction; heading downward. In early July, the price of crude oil flirted with 150 dollars per barrel, and yet a few years ago the idea of 100 dollar per barrel for oil was unfathomable. For me, the reasons behind this decrease are fairly obvious. Most of the western world is in the midst of a giant economic tail spin. The world market at large is going through a correction phase.

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