The announcement is a victory for environmental advocates, who have called on the state to divest from fossil fuel companies for years.
Fossil fuels
Posted inNews & Opinion
Morelle calls for reversal of rule allowing natural gas ‘bomb trains’
Rep. Joe Morelle said that if the Trump administration won’t act, he’ll take his request to the administration of President-elect Biden.
Posted inNews & Opinion
You’re getting warmer
Dismissing climate change is not an option if the human race is serious about survival.
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Charge up and go
[UPDATED AND REVISED 11/1/16]Cruising Route 66 in your Chevrolet or Pontiac V8 was once the ultimate expression of the American spirit — embodying freedom, restlessness, and the wide open road. But more than a half-century later, electric vehicles are inspiring a much different American spirit: one concerned about the steep fiscal and environmental costs of […]
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Rochesterians stand with the Sioux
Around 1,500 miles separate Rochester and the Standing Rock Sioux encampment meant to block construction of a section of the Dakota Access oil pipeline near the nation’s North Dakota reservation. But the distance isn’t stopping Rochesterians from joining the fight. They’ve organized events, such as last Saturday’s Water for Life rally, to draw attention to […]
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New York power policy, practices at odds
New York’s energy system is making a complex, tense, and urgent shift away from fossil fuels toward cleaner, renewable sources of power. That’s the official line, anyway. And the shift is supposed to accelerate over the next few years. A new state policy requires utilities to get half of their electricity from renewables such as […]
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Report: substantial fossil fuel reserves must remain untapped to avoid worst of climate change
Countries worldwide have massive oil, natural gas, and coal reserves that they could tap. But much of those reserves must remain unused in order to keep global warming under 2 degrees through the end of the century — an important tipping point, according to scientists. A new study published in Nature breaks down the reserves […]
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Monroe County’s air quality ranking slips
Monroe County’s grades are slipping a little in terms of air quality. This morning, the American Lung Association released its annual State of the Air report. It uses data from a few years to grade air quality in counties and metro areas across the country. Specifically, the Lung Association looks at the number of days […]
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The no-win dilemma of oil trains and pipelines
New York certainly hasn’t been immune to the oil train boom, particularly in Albany where a company’s plan to enhance its crude oil transfer terminal has generated a lot of controversy. And the Rochester area, too, has crude oil-carrying trains coming through it (see “Rochester’s crude awakening” in this week’s edition of City). This morning, the New York […]
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Solar’s odd couples
There’s an old trope that politics makes strange bedfellows, and that’s apparently true with solar power subsidies. Yale Environment 360 published an article yesterday that details the fights over solar power subsidies in some states, Arizona in particular. The article says that the opposition in these states has come from fossil fuel interests, including utility […]
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Contami-Nation: Josh Fox returns to fracking fracas
Matthew Schniper is an arts editor at the Colorado Springs Independent. He also frequently writes about film and sustainability topics. Of all things flammable in the wide world, tap water shouldn’t be one of them. At least that’s the consensus — call it crazy — among environmentalists and fracking foes, for whom the phenomena, supposedly […]
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Cleaner air
Each year, the American Lung Association ranks the air quality of the country’s largest metro areas. And this year’s State of the Air Report has good news for Monroe County. | The county received an A grade for ground-level ozone, and a B for short-term particle pollution. The report, which is based on averages from […]
