infrastructure
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Can the climate bill's death help build a living climate movement?
Environmentalists who want to solve the climate crisis need to stop using institutional barriers and opponents' unfair tactics as an excuse for failure, and instead build a grassroots movement that can overcome both. Such a grassroots movement must put forth exciting, attractive policies to fight climate chaos, rather than limp, pre-compromised proposals nobody can work up enthusiasm for.
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The climate bill is dead. Long live the climate bill!
Months after the Waxman-Markey/Kerry-Lieberman bill died, Harry Reid and environmentalists have finally admitted it is dead, and may even be ready to remove its rotting corpse from the living room and give it a decent burial.
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Reclaiming the streets
Cars promise mobility, and in a largely rural setting they provide it. But in an urbanizing world, where more than half of us live in cities, there is an inherent conflict between the automobile and the city. After a point, as their numbers multiply, automobiles provide not mobility but immobility, as well as increased air […]
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The NYT highlights a key food-system gap: infrastucture
When you’ve been in the trenches writing about a problem for a while, it’s good to see it finally getting traction in media and policy circles. That’s why I was thrilled to see Sunday’s New York Times piece on how a shortage of infrastructure is hampering the growth of local and regional food production. If […]
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Our old electric grid is no match for our new green energy plans
The bowels of New York City’s electricity system.Often referred to as “the world’s biggest machine,” the North American electricity grid as a whole is an integrated network of generators and millions of miles of wires that crisscross the United States and Canada. It snakes across fields, over mountains, through tunnels, along highways, beneath sidewalks, under […]
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MacArthur genius award winners include climate and ocean researchers
Some of the MacArthur Foundation “genius award” winners are doing work related to climate change. And they now they each have $500 grand, no strings attached. Neat-o: Climate scientist Peter Huybers mines “a wealth of often-conflicting experimental observations to develop compelling theories that explain global climate change over time.” Biogeochemist Daniel Sigman unravels “the interrelated […]
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Could we replace the nation’s pavement with solar panels?
Solar Roadways A while back I mentioned Solar Roadways, a clean-energy idea that appears kind of kooky, at least on the surface. (See what I did there?) The notion is to replace paved surfaces with rugged, specially built solar panels. The Solar Road Panels would contain not just solar panels but LED lighting (to enable […]
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Removing roadblocks to the growth of renewables
On Friday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration released new monthly statistics for renewable energy output as well as output of traditional forms of power. The good news is that renewable energy in May, the latest month for which statistics have been compiled, is at its all-time highest level, accounting for 13% of total power. The […]
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Congress reverses Chu’s decision, flushes $100 million down the toilet pursuing hydrogen cars
Honda’s FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel cell car: yours for only $100,000!There are only three sure things in life — death, taxes, and you’re never going to buy a hydrogen fuel cell car. Congress should stop wasting your money pursuing Bush’s phony dream. The fundamental problem with hydrogen as a transport fuel is one that no […]
