Appalachian Institute for Renewable Energy
Pioneering community-owned renewable energy
Prior to Earth Day this year, I’d thought of writing a critical piece, but just didn’t make the time to follow through. But the voice in my head just wouldn’t let the thought go, whether I was out on the bike, working at the computer, or sweeping the garage. Rebecca Leber’s piece at MotherJones, I’m
I just spent a few days on the Florida panhandle, where I went to see firsthand the ground-zero of Hurricane Michael at Mexico Beach. I was there 4 months to the day after Michael made its devastating landfall. Stunned. Sick to the stomach. Scary. Despair. Nothing in my experience prepared me for the sight. Standing
I recently wrote about neighborhoods in and around Denver-Boulder trying to pass a modest proposition to keep fracking rigs a little farther away from their backyards. That vote failed in the November elections as the fracking industry piled on a mountain of money to make sure they could continue to drill along side backyards, schools,
Hat’s off to Mike Collins and WFAE/Charlotte Talks for the debate that aired on Thursday, November 30th. Old foes Jim Warren of NC WARN and Duke Energy PR man Randy Wheeless meet again. Listen or watch the debate here. Fracking, pipelines, hog waste, externalities, profits and “show me the money”…oh my. I will publish a
AIRE does solar development and wayfinding for nonprofits. We certainly do not do partisan political advocacy and this “emergency” is no exception. However, the current moment seems to be such an extraordinary crux for all things solar, and in fact, all things just and sustainable, probably even all things human civilization, so with that disclaimer,
We’ve posted previously (here, here and here) on our admiration for the leadership of Poor Handmaid’s Center at Donaldson, up in Indiana as they took action to walk their talk on renewable energy and creation care. Adam Thada, the Director of Ecological Relations just issued the first Provincial report on the financial and ecological returns
I co-authored a piece last December published in the North Carolina Bar Journal about the “Trial of the Century,” a bigtime atmospheric trust lawsuit. Since that article came out, the trial seemed to overcome each monkey wrench the government threw at it– various hail mary’s were batted down by federal judges and one by the
With the wave of recent hurricanes, floods and wildfires as real reminders of what we value in the face of climate-related loss, yet another climate report was just released. This one, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) bears special mention because of the worldwide stature of the IPCC and it’s decades-long work on
Two economists were just awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics. Of course that isn’t a newsflash, because it happens every year, but the work for which they were recognized is both newsworthy and urgent. The dwindling window of opportunity to decarbonize the global economy and literally save the biosphere, combined with the fact that
After several months of intensive planning, the Sisters and lay staff of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, walked their talk and made the first of several solar installments on the Center at Donaldson’s 150 acre campus near South Bend, Indiana. They dedicated the first phase of their solar initiative on the 1st day of