Climate Climate & Energy
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Flooding in Freetown
Most people love their home town. But what if you lived in a regularly flooded slum? Kroo Bay is a community of 16,000 people living at the bottom of a valley in Freetown, Sierra Leone separated from the sea by a rubbish dump. During the rainy season once or twice a year, and with increasing frequency, the whole area floods.
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Twists and turns on the ‘Hope-to-Despair Express’
The Rutschbanen roller coaster.Photo courtesy wikimedia commonsCOPENHAGEN — The Danish capital’s famous Tivoli gardens boasts an equally celebrated roller coaster. Built in 1914, it is the oldest all-wooden one still operating in the world; being at the climate summit here over the last two days has felt like taking as ride on it. In truth, […]
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New data paints a more toxic picture of TVA coal ash spill
The disastrous coal ash spill that occurred a year ago at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee dumped a whopping 2.66 million pounds of 10 toxic pollutants into the nearby Emory and Clinch rivers — more than all the surface-water discharges from all U.S. power plants in 2007. That’s one of […]
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The specter of violence in Copenhagen
Cops after an Ungdomshuset demonstration in Copenhagen.Photo courtesy aai4c via Flickr One of the questions hanging over Copenhagen for these two weeks is whether there will be significant violence, especially at mass rallies. The city’s English-language newspaper (turns out there is one) has an interesting article about the very long shifts that Danish police will […]
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Roberts, take 3: New energy sources are cheaper than trying to clean coal
This is the last entry in a series of six email exchanges between two climate-change experts on the future use of coal. The series was originally posted here. Editorial note: The price of energy should reflect its “true” cost, Roberts argues. Non-renewable dirty sources like coal should be priced to take into account their real […]
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Mackler, take 3: The technology is right here, right now
This is the fifth entry in a series of six email exchanges between two climate-change experts on the future use of coal. The series was originally posted here. Editorial note: Current social and political barriers to adopting carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) are not insurmountable, Mackler argues. The first step toward a solution lies […]
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Roberts, take 2: We don’t have time for capital-intensive industrial mega-projects
This is the fourth entry in a series of six email exchanges between two climate-change experts on the future use of coal. The series was originally posted here. Editorial note: Time is of the essence, Roberts argues. We must be agile and find solutions that can be rapidly implemented, learned from, and refined, rather than […]
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Mackler, take 2: We don’t have time for major shifts in energy policy
This is the third entry in a series of six email exchanges between two climate-change experts on the future use of coal. The series was originally posted here. Editorial note: Mackler argues that the world lacks time for its leaders to navigate the political process necessary for a complete change of energy policy direction. Large-scale […]
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Roberts, take 1: Coal is in short supply, expensive, and cannot be made clean
This is the second entry in a series of six email exchanges between two climate-change experts on the future use of coal. The series was originally posted here. Editorial note: Roberts argues that the key question is not “how can we best reduce carbon dioxide emissions?” Rather, we need to confront a more fundamental question […]
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Mackler, take 1: Clean coal is a necessary part of fighting climate change
This is the first entry in a series of six email exchanges between two climate-change experts on the future use of coal. The series was originally posted here. Editoral note: While Sasha Mackler agrees that coal is one of the primary contributors to detrimental climate change, he argues that using current technology to develop low-carbon […]
