MUM courses:
- Energy Use by Man and Nature
- Hands On Course In Sustainable Technologies
- Permaculture Design Certification
- Sustainability Forest Academy
- Artisan Foods and the Slow Food Movement
- Local Economy
Grinnell College courses:
Resource Center
Review Of Chevrons Website
Renewable Energy Website Review/ Research Report Alex Reich 2-20-08
On their home website, http://www.chevron.com, Chevron claims to be “the world’s largest producer of renewable energy.” This encouraging claim appears to be true, and Chevron provides strong examples and explanations of their commendable investments in energy from geothermal, solar, and ocean sources (http://www.chevron.com/deliveringenergy/). However, they neglect to even mention wind energy, and they still hold coal and oil dear to their heart. They are even investigating the extraction of oil from Canada’s oil sands. Chevron’s attachment to coal and oil is understandable, since these energy sources have been at the core of worldwide energy use and therefore also at the center of Chevron’s economic generation for a long time. But, their dogmatic attachment to the philosophy that we can just search for more oil using new and improved technologies is unacceptable. Not only do they acknowledge that it takes an astounding 2 tons of sand to produce just 42 gallons of crude oil (http://www.chevron.com/deliveringenergy/oilsands/), but they explicitly state, in their Action Plan on Climate Change, that they will work to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases (http://www.chevron.com/globalissues/climatechange/actionplan/#). Extracting oil from oil sands is an inefficient process that maintains the dogma of business as usual while degrading the environment and taking away from potential in renewable energies. It is beyond me to understand exactly how they plan to argue that mining for oil sands agrees with their stated philosophy towards climate change.