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Articles by Ken Ward

Ken Ward is a climate campaigner and carpenter whose work can be see here.

Featured Article

Who wants to talk about climate on a holiday, especially Thanksgiving, when the spirit is generous and food inviting? Not me, I don’t generally volunteer to discuss the matter outside of activist circles; who wants to be a wet blanket, especially on a holiday? It is noteworthy, then, that climate was a topic of conversation this year among friends and family, for reasons I think appropriate to the occasion. The political reverberations of Hurricane Sandy, a new spate of media attention to climate, Bill McKibben’s galvanizing “Do The Math”/ 350.org tour and the promise of quick Congressional action are hopeful signs.

It seems churlish to gripe, but where family and friends see action after impasse,  acceptance winning over denial and a victory for climate action and environmentalists, I see an institution in shambles pursuing a morally bankrupt strategy, and experience a creeping dread. Without even the semblance of embarrassment, we are poised to trot out a climate “solution” devised by Enron based on antique and totally inaccurate climate science treating the matter as a second-tier problem because to do anything else would be, well, difficult.

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  • On neighbors & the speed of plasterers

    On the wall of many offices of the Fund for Public Interest Research, a spinoff outfit of the state PIRGs which dominates the market for progressive door-to-door and telephone canvasses, there is a framed piece of paper in which I take inordinate pride. It is a blurry copy of a thirty year old mimeographed crew […]

  • The Trouble with Tribbles

    Grist columns have recently seen a new spate of climate obstructionism. Here’s DaveWR responding to a recent post … “I am old enough to firmly believe in climate change. I was born when the planet was just ending several warming decades which had followed several cooling decades, which were imbedded in the general warming which […]

  • Geoffrey Lean is dead wrong, and here’s why

    “So where do we go from here?” asks Geoffrey Lean. “How do we get from the … debacle of Copenhagen to a new and worthwhile climate treaty?” The question reminds me of the old Bert & I tale about the Maine farmer who, when asked by a motorist for directions to Millinocket, answers, “You cahn’t […]

  • Top 10 worst Christmas gifts

    The Jamaica Plain Green House today released its second annual list of “Top 10 Worst Christmas Gifts.” The list ranges from $2 stocking stuffers to baubles of the super-rich. JP Green House co-founder Ken Ward said, “These ten items achieved high scores on each of three criteria — profligate, unnecessary, and tasteless energy use — […]