More Humans, Less of Everything Else

The extraction of “unconventional” fossil fuels, whether through fracking, deep-water drilling or the unimaginable waste of Canadian tar sands, has provided much of the motivation in my personal life to methodically reduce our family’s CO2 footprint. Since the baseline year of 2000, we have managed to reduce our contribution to greenhouse gasses by approximately 90%. […]

Paying Solar’s Fair Share

New changes are going into effect for NV Energy’s net metering customers, mostly those with solar electric systems on their homes. I’ve received several calls about a letter that NV Energy sent out last week that outlines changes to the way certain fees will be assessed. The changes are a result of the passage of […]

Spring Into Green 2014

It’s time to spring into green again. Several green events for Southern Nevadans are underway or coming soon. To be clear, green events have become so popular that they happen all the time in our community, it’s just that some major ones tend to occur at this time of year. Creating a sustainable community requires […]

Looking Back at a Green 2013

Green Living covers a lot of territory. Let’s take a look back with a recap of the topics we covered in this Green 2013. Winter We kicked off the year with “Liking Las Vegas,” highlighting some great green things that have been happening in the valley. The topic of “Solar-Ready Homes” revealed the logic of […]

Thankful Green Living

Home is especially meaningful on Thanksgiving, where we gather with family and friends to express our good fortune. Just having a home provides much to be thankful for, since far too many go without. Imagine how different it could be for the less fortunate among us if, through our actions to help ourselves, we could […]

The Devil is in the Details – Support Clean Energy!

Guest post by Lydia Ball, Clean Energy Project The Public Utilities Commission of Nevada (PUCN) is holding a Consumer Session on October 16th. The purpose of the Session is to take comments from ratepayers about the merger between NV Energy and MidAmerican. If you care about clean energy in Nevada, this is important, and I […]

Las Vegas’ Historical Harrison House Goes Green

Hey, are you doing anything this evening?  You are invited to the August Green Drinks event at the Harrison House! Mingle with many of Las Vegas’ green leaders, movers and shakers at this historic West Side property that is being rehabilitated into a green demonstration resource for the community. Food and beverages will be on […]

Be a Clean Energy Leader

We recently survived the hottest June on record in Las Vegas, though five valley residents were not so fortunate as the heat wave turned deadly. My car’s thermometer, which has always been fairly accurate, registered an outside temperature of 121 degrees as I drove across town one day. It remained there for several miles before […]

Clean Energy: Renters Can Do It Too!

One of my recent columns prompted a reader named Paul to write, “I want to move toward a greener lifestyle, especially want to incorporate solar. But since I am renting a house, I’m concerned there’s little I can do without installing things on a house I don’t own. Any ideas?” This is an excellent question […]

A Sense of Urgency: It’s Too Late to do Nothing for Earth

I try to keep the tone mostly warm and friendly here but what drives me to write is very serious. We are facing… no, strike that. We are creating a planetary emergency. Let me state a few facts and then tie them all together. The Earth has an energy imbalance due to added greenhouse gasses […]