Solartopia Green Power and Wellness Hour – 12.17.15

WHAT HAPPENED IN PARIS? The new climate accord is being widely hailed as an historic turning point. Energy expert PAUL GIPE tells us why he thinks Paris will make a huge difference in RENEWABLE ENERGY and the transition to a green-powered Earth.

Paul currently works in Bakersfield, California, and describes a major victory just won in defeating a big carbon burner there. We also track the history of Denmark’s world-changing decision to go with wind power instead of nuclear, confirming the impact that Solartopian activism can have on our future.

Most of all, Paul describes the latest spectacular advances in wind and solar technologies, and how they can and will be owned by the communities that use them.

Paul’s new WIND POWER FOR THE REST OF US will be published in 2016. You can reach him at www.wind-works.org. And if you want the real story on the future of green power, don’t miss this show!

Pact with devil? California farmers use oil firms’ water By Veronique DUPONT

An efficient solution to a historic drought, or an environmentally risky pact with the devil? That’s the question raised by California farmers who are irrigating their crops with waste water supplied by oil companies, in an arrangement slammed as dangerous by environmental campaigners. Driving into the parched region around Bakersfield, in the western US state’s fertile Central Valley, it is …

House Bulldozed for Wind Farm, Family Says – REBEKAH KEARN

Wind energy companies bulldozed a black family’s house because they were the sole holdouts who refused to sell out to a huge wind farm, the family claims in court. Darlene Dotson and her sons David and Daniel sued EDP Renewables North America, Horizon Wind Energy Co., Rising Tree Wind Farm, CVE Contracting Group, and Renewable Land LLC, on May 7 …