Sustainable North

From the New York Times on Thursday, February 5, 2009:
President Obama ordered the Energy Department on Thursday to immediately draft long-overdue standards to make a variety of appliances and light bulbs more energy efficient.
Over the last three decades, Congress has demanded stricter efficiency standards on 30 categories of products, as varied as residential air-conditioners and [...]

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From the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy office, posted on 2/18/09, retrieved on Friday, March 6, 2009:
President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 on February 17, and the tax section of the act provides greater tax credits for clean energy projects at homes and businesses and [...]

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From the Anchorage Daily News on Sunday, February 8, 2009:
Gov. Sarah Palin plans to introduce a bill calling for creating a joint corporation of the six Railbelt electric utilities.

Palin says such an entity could unite a “fragmented group of rival utilities” and could save rate payers $40 million annually.

The utilities are Fairbanks-based Golden Valley Electric [...]

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From the Arctic Sounder on Thursday, January 29, 2009:
State officials assessing hardships on the lower Yukon River area for a possible disaster declaration said they’ll push to create a fuel voucher that could help the poorest families.
After two days of listening to crushing testimony from scores of residents in Emmonak and Kotlik, the team said [...]

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From npr.org on Wednesday, January 21, 2009:
With awareness of global warming rising, going “green” and reducing one’s “carbon footprint” have become pop culture catchphrases. But addressing climate change on a global, governmental level is still a matter of heated debate.
With potentially staggering costs involved, are efforts to make major reductions in carbon emissions even worth [...]

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From the Anchorage Daily News on Wednesday, January 21, 2009:

 A key gauge of homebuilders’ confidence sank to a new low this month, as the deepening U.S. recession and rising unemployment erode chances for a housing turnaround.
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo housing market index released Wednesday dropped one point to a record 8 in [...]

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From the transcript of a video interview with Carol Browner, proposed assistant to the president on energy and climate, the Washington Post on Thursday, January 15, 2009:
LR: What Bush initiatives do you have your eye on to roll back?
CB: Unfortunately, the list is rather long. . . . The Supreme Court ruled almost two years ago now [...]

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From The Hill, published in May, 2008, and retrieved on Monday, January 11, 2009:
Together, China and the United States produce 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Their actions to curb or expand energy consumption will determine whether efforts to stop global climate change succeed or fail. If these two nations act to curb emissions, [...]

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A book review from slate.com, retrieved on Tuesday, January 13, 2009:
Bill McKibben—who is himself one of the most literate and talented environmentalists working today—has captured the great sprawling contradictions of the environmentalist tradition by locking the great greens of the past two centuries of U.S. history together in the pages of American Earth: Environmental Writing Since [...]

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From the U.S. Department of Energy website, posted 5/5/08, retrieved 1/5/09:
In 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published a report that examines the technical feasibility of using wind energy to generate 20% of the nation’s electricity demand by 2030. The report, “20% Wind Energy by 2030: Increasing Wind Energy’s Contribution to U.S. Electricity Supply,” [...]

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