The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

TakePart Gang:

Arrested in Development by Wendy Cohen

Is Google Making Us Dumber? by Blair Golson

* * *

Nicole Hughes:

Top 5 Ways to Green Your July 4th

Greenopia: Eco-Guides For Your City

* * *

Andy Kondrat:

Hypermiling Contest Winner Gets 124 Miles to the Gallon

Rise in Fuel Prices May Lead to Dirtier Energy Sources

* * *

Jon Popham:

Red Tide in Yellow Sea Threatens Olympics

Mercedes-Benz Ditching Gasoline Cars by 2015

* * *

Giulia Rozzi:

46664 Concert: Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela

Denise Richards Likes to Share

* * *

Gina Telaroli:

Top 10 Movies for the 4th of July: For Patriots and Cynics!

The Radical and Beautiful Journey of Wall-E

So some of us hadn’t been too bent out of shape with the skyrocketing fuel prices because 1) Some of us are selling our cars anyway, and 2) Some of us kind of hoped this would necessitate a rise in renewable energies. However, there are some predictions floating around out there which state that may not be the case. The International Herald Tribune tells us,

According to Climate Strategies, an international climate policy network based at the University of Cambridge, one of the likeliest consequences [of high fuel costs] could be a rush to highly polluting technologies to extract more fossil fuels from different sources, including technologies pioneered during the last century to extract liquid fuels from coal.

The thought is that, instead of spending on innovation to combat fuel prices, governments and companies might instead revert back to tried and true, yet dirtier, practices to meet energy demand.

Read the rest of this entry »

Barack Obama, he that is now consistently being called the presumptive nominee, in the past has been less than consistent on his stance in regards to coal energy, according to a Washington Post article.  The article, posted yesterday in the blog section of the Post, notes that Obama has always walked a fine line between environmentalism and the powerful coal lobby in his home state of Illinois (which I hear will become 25% more awesome come August 1), and in this election his campaign has attempted to show Obama as a champion of clean coal.

Over the past two weeks, Obama’s campaign has run an ad in Kentucky depicting Obama as a strong friend of the coal industry, recounting his efforts on behalf of coal miners in southern Illinois and touting his success in securing $200 million in the federal budget last year for “clean coal” technologies.

Read the rest of this entry »