Large windmills and solar panels are seen in Atlantic City in October 2008. (AP)
One year ago, gasoline prices were soaring toward four dollars a gallon and fuel-efficient hybrid cars were flying off the lots. Toyota dealers couldn’t keep a two-day stock of Prius hybrids on hand.
Today, with oil down and the economy bust, they have an 80-day stock, and hybrid sales have fallen off a cliff steeper than general car sales.
So, the question: Can green technology really save our broken economy? The Obama administration is betting big it will. We’ll ask two players with a big stake in the answer.
This hour, On Point: A gut-check on the green economy.
You can join the conversation. Is green tech our golden ticket out of this economic bust? Does saving the economy and environment at once sound too good to be true? Or just right?
No nuclear power plants have been built in the US since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. But interest in nuclear energy has been growing in the past year, as the country looks for alternatives to coal and natural gas. In this week’s Underreported, Adam Aston of Business Week and Scott Cullen, the Nuclear Security Project Director for the GRACE Policy Institute, discuss the pros and cons of investing in new nuclear power plants.
2005 was the warmest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere. On today’s Underreported, we’ll focus our attention on climate change, and whether or not the effects of global warming are already being felt. We’ll look at some of the lesser-known issues currently being debated—from exploding beetle populations in the West, to the financial risks associated with global warming. Dr. Paul Epstein from the Center for Health and the Global Environment, Dr. Gavin Schmidt from NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Adam Aston of BusinessWeek join us.
