How Electricity was (and is) Sold to America By Elisabeth Robson / RadFemBiophilia’s Newsletter In 1915, General Electric released a silent promotional film titled The Home Electrical offering a glimpse into a gleaming, frictionless future. The film walks viewers through a model electric home: lights flicked on at the wall, meals cooked without fire, laundry cleaned without soap and muscle. A young wife smiles as she moves effortlessly through her day, assisted by gadgets that promised to eliminate drudgery and dirt. This was not a documentary—it was a vision, a fantasy, a sales pitch. At the time, only a small fraction of American households had electricity at all, and nearly 90% of rural families still relied on oil lamps, wood stoves, hand pumps, and washboards. But the message was clear: to be modern was to be electric—and anything less was a kind of failure. ...

Editor’s note: Brownsville, Texas - “ Element Fuels has received the necessary permitting to construct and operate a refinery capable of producing in excess of 160,000 barrels, or approximately 6.7 million gallons, per day of finished gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel,” said Founder and Co-CEO John Calce. “A permit for a greenfield refinery of this size, scope, and functionality has not been granted in the United States since the 1970’s. This speaks to the innovative approaches we are taking to address climate and sustainability concerns in cleaner, greener ways that are new to the refinery space.” ...

Editor’s note: “The 2025 Queensland floods refer to significant flooding that impacted the northeast Australian state of Queensland in late January, early February, into March and April 2025. The disaster resulted in at least two fatalities from flooding, 31 fatalities from a disease outbreak and prompted mass evacuation orders in Queensland’s coastal regions.” According to flood gauges, the enormous body of water has surpassed the 1974 event, widely considered the largest flood in Queensland history. But it was still sitting within the floodplain, Sheldon says, just “reaching the edges” of where people thought it would go. ...

Editor’s note: “What if you could save the climate while continuing to pollute it?” If that sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. But corporations across the globe are increasingly trying to answer this question with the same shady financial tool: carbon offsets. To understand what’s going on with the carbon market, it’s important to know the terms(term-oil), vocabulary and organizations involved. For starters, a carbon credit is different from a carbon offset. A carbon credit represents a metric ton of carbon dioxide or the equivalent of other climate-warming gases kept out of the atmosphere. If a company (or individual, or country) uses that credit to compensate for its emissions — perhaps on the way to a claim of reduced net emissions — it becomes an offset. ...

As a private university expands its footprint and threatens the amphibian’s habitat, residents are voicing their opposition and searching for another way forward. By Lee Hedgepeth April 10, 2025 This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. HOMEWOOD, Ala.—Ellen McLaughlin said she wasn’t speaking for herself. “I speak for the salamanders,” she told those gathered at a community meeting in late March. ...

Editor’s note: “A new report from Harvard’s Electricity Law Initiative says unless something changes, all U.S. consumers will pay billions of dollars to build new power plants to serve Big Tech. Data centers are forecast to account for up to 12% of all U.S. electricity demand by 2028. They currently use about 4% of all electricity. Historically, costs for new power plants, power lines and other infrastructure is paid for by all customers under the belief that everyone benefits from those investments. ...

Editor’s note: “I think we’re in the midst of a collapse of civilization, and we’re definitely in the midst of the end of the American empire. And when empires start to fail, a lot of people get really crazy. In The Culture of Make Believe, I predicted the rise of the Tea Party. I recognized that in a system based on competition and where people identify with the system, when times get tough, they wouldn’t blame the system, but instead, they would indicate it’s the damn Mexicans’ fault or the damn black people’s fault or the damn women’s fault or some other group. The thing that I didn’t predict was that the Left would go insane in its own way. I anticipated the rise of an authoritarian Right, but not authoritarianism more generally, to which the Left is not immune. The collapse of empire results in increased insecurity and the demand for stability. The cliché about Mussolini is that he made the trains run on time, that he brought about stability.” - [Derrick Jensen](http://I think we’re in the midst of a collapse of civilization, and we’re definitely in the midst of the end of the American empire. And when empires start to fail, a lot of people get really crazy. In The Culture of Make Believe, I predicted the rise of the Tea Party. I recognized that in a system based on competition and where people identify with the system, when times get tough, they wouldn’t blame the system, but instead, they would indicate it’s the damn Mexicans’ fault or the damn black people’s fault or the damn women’s fault or some other group. The thing that I didn’t predict was that the Left would go insane in its own way. I anticipated the rise of an authoritarian Right, but not authoritarianism more generally, to which the Left is not immune. The collapse of empire results in increased insecurity and the demand for stability. The cliché about Mussolini is that he made the trains run on time, that he brought about stability.) ...

A Wild Earth Day ! On April 22: Meet free-roaming bison and baby prairie dogs! Learn about oceans that need us and fires that don’t! Take a fast trip through human history, from cave art to the current mess! Get inspired by tales of resistance and songs of love! All donations go directly to help fund our annual conference. And you can double your impact by giving during A Wild Earth Day! ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Lisa Linowes (603) 838-6588 lisa@saverightwhales.org Save Right Whales Coalition Files Supreme Court Brief Challenging BOEM’s Unlawful Offshore Wind Approvals NEW HAMPSHIRE (April 14) — The Save Right Whales Coalition (SRWC) has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the Court to review two cases challenging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) approval of the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind project. The brief argues that BOEM unlawfully reinterpreted the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) to expand its discretionary authority and bypass statutory protections for ocean users and marine ecosystems. ...

Editor’s notes: “A Washington state city has granted part of the Snohomish River watershed legal rights that can be enforced in court. In nearly all cases, state legislatures heavily lobbied by commercial industries have preempted the laws, rendering them unenforceable. But the Everett initiative could be the first to withstand such a challenge. Democrats, typically more open to stronger environmental protections than Republicans, currently control Washington’s Legislature and governorship.” Efforts to apply the rights of nature in Ecuador have often failed. Legal challenges can become highly politicised and there is little legal infrastructure beyond general constitutional principles. ...