There are many ways one could demolish New York Times columnist David Brooks' brain-dead op-ed on clean energy, it's so ridiculous. One way is this masterful demolition by Conservation Services Group CEO Simon Cowell. Here's an excerpt, focused on Brooks' absurd contention that renewable energy is "not a jobs program."  As Cowell puts it, this "could not be further from the truth."

Everyone in the solar industry, as well as everyone who supports solar power, should read the superb, recent piece by Michael Grunwald of Time Magazine -- "(Almost) Everyone Loves Solar."  Here are the key points:

To put it mildly, this story is not comforting.

How much can we save by recycling? A great deal, according to Earth911, which "broke down 10 common materials and showed you how much energy, water and other natural resources can be saved by recycling them."  For instance:

You've got to love the irony of a story like this one.

In the past, we've seen a lot of denial, a good deal of it laughably false, by politicians regarding the billions in dollars per year doled out in taxpayer-funded corporate welfare to highly profitable oil companies.  Of course, given that many of these politicians are heavily funded by Big Oil, that shouldn't come as a great surprise.  Despite Big Oil's big clout in Congress, a new report by Politico indicates that this situation might, just might, be changing.

With stories like this one, it's no wonder that "construction of the [Keystone XL Canadian tarsands] pipeline in Texas has faced growing opposition by local land owners and environmental activists, some of whom have taken up residence in trees and forcing crews to work around them."

The video is courtesy of The Atlantic, which interviewed SunRun President Lynn Jurich about her company's successful, innovative business model. Great stuff, check it out.

If you missed it, the Sunday New York Times had a superb, clear-eyed op-ed by Solarcentury chairman Jeremy Leggett, entitled Don't Block the Sun. The entire piece is excellent, and we strongly recommend it. For now, here are a few highlights.

There are so many falsehoods about clean energy being spewed by the dirty energy industries and their media allies, it's hard to keep up with them, let alone to debunk them all. Still, we've got to try.  That's exactly what CleanTechnica has done in its "Fact Check" on a Fox News segment regarding the Mid-Atlantic wind farm proposal.  According to CleanTechnica:

As we've previously discussed,  the Koch brothers are central to the web of dirty energy interests attacking clean energy. These guys are so egregiously, almost comically, villainous, they've been called "the plutocrats from central casting – oil-and-gas billionaires ready to buy any congressman, fund any lie, fight any law, bust any union, despoil any landscape, or shirk any (tax) burden to push their free-market religion and pump up their profits."

Despite millions of dollars in advertising by BP, attempting to resurrect its corporate image and convince us that the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is ancient history now, that is simply not the case.

As he frequently does, Stephen Lacey of Climate Progress hits the nail on the head with his recent article, "Why The ‘Get Rid Of All Energy Subsidies’ Argument Is A Political Distraction." We strongly recommend that you read the entire piece carefully, but for now, here are a few key points.

The findings of a new GAO study on the environmental and public health risks of oil and gas "fracking" don't exactly give us a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Back in August, we wrote about a report by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) which found, among other things, that the "wind energy industry supports 75,000 full-time jobs at more than 400 facilities across 43 states.”  Now, DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy is out with a new study, this one focused on "the wind-rich Great Plains and Rocky Mountain Region," which takes this research to a more granular, but no less impressive, level of detail.

The other day, we highlighted a story about how one dirty energy company - Canadian tar sands company TransCanada - had a great grandmother throw in jail for protesting their destruction of her property.  Sadly, this is not an isolated example of how oil, gas, and coal companies treat people. For instance, the Associated Press reports:

Over at TomDispatch.com, Hampshire College Professor Michael T. Klare, author of The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources, shares a few thoughts on what "fossil-fuel enthusiasts" have been "trumpeting [as] the dawn of a new 'golden age of oil'", one "that would kick-start the American economy, generate millions of new jobs, and free this country from its dependence on imported petroleum."

This story is sadly typical of how the powerful, dirty energy industry - in this case, Canadian tar sands company TransCanada, busy building the southern leg of the Keystone Pipeline - treat people.

A new poll by Hart Research once again finds what we've known for a long time: Americans overwhelmingly hold favorable views of clean energy and believe we should expand it. Here are a few highlights from the poll: