Financial Lessons From The Oil Bust by Inside Energy

How One Boomtown Is Trying To Outsmart A Bust by Inside Energy

It is the classic holiday dilemma. Do you take the easy way out and buy a pretty decent frozen pie from the grocery store or risk making your own burnt, lumpy version? While there is something special about that home-cooked option, every chef knows that it takes a lot of your own energy. But increasingly Americans are relying on a different kind of energy to produce their food -- the fossil-fueled machines and processors that bring us pre-made pie dough, bagged lettuce, and those chicken strips with perfect grill marks. Our Inside Energy reporter Leigh Paterson has more on the growing energy costs of convenience.

A giant stream of potent climate-warming gas – methane – is blowing hundreds of feet into the air in Los Angeles County for the seventh week. The release cancels out hundreds of smaller efforts over more than a decade to clamp down on escapes of the gas, a priority because in the short term, methane is a far more powerful climate-warming gas than carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide emissions have a pretty bad rap these days. The Paris Climate summit brought together delegations from all over the world in an effort to cut carbon emissions and avoid catastrophic global warming. But right now the dirtiest fuel - coal - still supplies nearly 40% of the electricity in the U.S. and in even more in many developing countries. The good news is this gas isn’t always destructive. CO2 can actually be turned into a building block to make all sorts of products that we use every day. Our Inside Energy reporter Leigh Paterson has more on the furious race to capture carbon in the fight against climate change.

It takes a lot of energy to produce the food we eat, but technologies are improving to give some of that energy back to us after we’re finished with it.

Today’s farmers can produce more from their land than ever before. That’s partially because of a key ingredient that has never been more widely available: fertilizer. The U.S. may be on the verge of a boom in fertilizer plants. That could be good news for farmers - but not the environment.

The Four Steps Of Climate Change Denial by Inside Energy

North Dakota’s Fort Berthold Indian Reservation is at the heart of the Bakken oil boom. When anthropologist Jen Shannon first visited the tribes there, it was to return religious artifacts. But the relationship grew. Next came an oral history project, then a film. And now, a more unusual request - help kids do science projects to understand their changing community.

The Carbon Footprint Of Your Thanksgiving Dinner by Inside Energy