Climate Climate & Energy
All Stories
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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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Can you taste the fuels in your food?
Amanda Little on the farm. If you pinned a map of the United States to a dartboard, Kansas would be the bull’s-eye. Smack dab in the center of the country, the Sunflower State is one of America’s most productive agricultural hotbeds — the fifth-biggest producer of crops and livestock in the country. More than 90 […]
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The violent twilight of oil and a strategy to expose it
MaassPhoto courtesy Erinn Hartman/KnopfNew York Times Magazine contributing writer Peter Maass spent eight years following the flow of oil around the world, from fields in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Azerbaijan to corporate boardrooms. His new book, Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil, uses stories from these locales to show why the […]
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At SEJ, doom and gloom without the sense of humor
It’s a wonder I continue to show up at Society of Environmental Journalists conferences when you consider how much of a downer some of these panels can be. And that’s doubly true about the ones on climate change. This afternoon’s session on global warming as a national security issue was an even darker affair than […]
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National Institutes of Energy needed to fill energy research and development gap
Friday factoids time: The U.S. biomedical and pharmaceutical industry invests between 10-20 percent of revenues in research and development (R&D) and new product development, spending $58.8 billion on R&D in 2007. The U.S. government adds an additional $30 billion per year investment in biomedical R&D through the National Institutes of Health. In contrast, the U.S. […]
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Meet your new national parks chief
New Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis: Friendly.Photo: National Park ServiceOne weekend this summer, my wife and I ferried across Puget Sound to Olympic National Park, chose a hiking route with the help of an awesomely smart and patient ranger, and set forth from the highest trailhead in the park. We crossed alpine ridges, dropped into […]
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The place to be if you’re young and you care about the climate: Power Shift ’09
Starting on Oct. 9, the Energy Action Coalition is kicking off 11 Power Shift youth summits across the country, where young people will gather to demand climate action from President Obama and Congress and get training and inspiration for on-the-ground activism. In November 2007 and March 2009, there were big Power Shift confabs in the […]
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Dirty energy fuels college campuses
University of Washington campus.Did you know that many of our country’s colleges and universities — places that are supposed to be a source of higher-education and leadership — get their electricity by burning coal? And sometimes those coal-fired power plants are even on the campuses? I think many of us look back in disbelief at […]
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Climate Controversy Damages Chamber's Reputation
The high-profile departures from the US Chamber because of its extremist stance on climate, the strong criticism from its own former members and the Chamber’s tone-deaf response to the situation are contributing to reputational damage that is hurting the organization’s credibility. But don’t take my word for it. Others are making the same observation. Fortune Magazine […]
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Our global pyramid scheme
Our mismanaged world economy today has many of the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme takes payments from a broad base of investors and uses these to pay off returns. It creates the illusion that it is providing a highly attractive rate of return on investment as a result of savvy investment decisions […]
