Latest Articles

Lutsel Make a Deal

Canadian government, Natives agree to create massive national park The Canadian government and a tiny Native tribe have agreed to work together to create an 8.3 million acre national park in the Northwest Territories. Three decades ago, the Lutsel K’e Dene tribe turned down a similar proposal, fearing national-park designation would interfere with hunting rights […]

We Ain’t Got the Power

Electricity demand outpacing supply in North America Demand for electricity in the U.S. is increasing three times faster than power plants and lines are being built, says a new report from the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC). U.S. energy demand is predicted to increase about 19 or 20 percent in the next decade; in […]

We Put the “Pro” in “Procrastinate”

Twiddling our thumbs on climate change could cost $20 trillion a year by 2100 Failure to fight global warming could cost $20 trillion a year by the end of the century, says a new study from Tufts University — and that doesn’t include costs of biodiversity loss or unpredictable events like the shutdown of the […]

A Tip of the Cap

California will join Northeast greenhouse-gas reduction program California will participate in the carbon cap-and-trade program being established in seven Northeast states, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) announced today. Linking in with the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative — which we suppose won’t be so regional anymore — will help California’s industries comply with an impending mandatory […]

Cheri Sugal, defender of a Mexican rainforest, answers Grist’s questions

Cheri Sugal. What work do you do? I am the executive director of Friends of Calakmul. What does your organization do? Our organization protects land in the threatened rainforest of southern Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. We sign lease agreements with local landowner groups, called ejidos. In exchange for an annual payment, […]

The tastiest tidbits from the news

I hope you people are making good use of the blogroll at the lower left of this page. Therein lie more treasures than I could possibly discuss or link to. Here's a little sampling of what I found just since Friday:

Forbes’ ‘Energy Outlook 2007’ makes bracing reading

Investment rags exist to fetishize the bottom line. They promise insights and information that can make their readers rich. People on the hunt for lucre need a clear-eyed view of how the world works -- the better to exploit conditions for profit.

That's the progressive case for monitoring the financial/business press. It's true, as far as it goes, though financial journalists are as susceptible as any others to hype, as their generally euphoric reaction to the dot-com bubble shows.

Business publications are also worth reading because they offer a window into the minds of captains of industry -- the people who yank the global economy's levers.

Forbes recently published a special issue titled Energy Outlook 2007. It's worth a look.

Energy is better spent elsewhere

(Warning: If speaking frankly about religion's dark side upsets you, please read no further.)

There has been a lot of discussion on this site recently about the potential positive role religion (specifically Christianity) can have in solving our environmental problems.

Call me skeptical.

Biodiesel for cell phone towers not all good

Here's a Reuters piece about using locally grown crops to power remote cell phone towers in areas of the developing world. Always walking that fine line between reality and pessimism, I have a few thoughts to share.

It turns out that most of the people in the world who do not already have cell phones also live where there is no power-generation infrastructure (electricity). It's a bit of a conundrum. If you are going to expand your cell phone market to the billions who don't have one yet, you have to find ways to power your cell phone towers, as well as give your potential customers enough electricity to power the phones you want to sell to them.

The latest issue is full of goodies

This month's issue of Science gave me lots of food for thought.

There was an article about Edmund Phelps, who just won the 2006 Nobel Prize in economics. It tells us that the U.S. swept the science Nobel Prizes this year -- analogous to winning all the gold medals at the Olympics. Putting it this way cheapens the whole process and is a reminder of the competitive nature of people, scientists included.

On the other hand, this is an example of how a country with enough wealth and education to pay millions of people to sit around on their butts and problem solve -- engineers, scientists, and economists -- can contribute solutions to the world's many problems.

Expect to see more solutions coming from India and China in the not too distant future. The three billion desperately poor of the world cannot contribute, having their hands full just staying alive. Those billions of potential problem solvers are lost to us, thanks to the tremendous rate of population growth that outstripped the economic growth, infrastructure, and education needed to keep them from being impoverished.