Climate Climate & Energy
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CHP primer: Fun with thermodynamics
Those of us who believe (as I do) that there are massive opportunities to reduce US energy costs while simultaneously lowering our greenhouse gas footprint spend a lot of time getting into arguments with bad economists. These folks remember just enough of freshman theory (supply, demand, price, blah blah blah) to assert confidently that if […]
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What baseball can teach policymakers
With the Major League Baseball season having just begun, I’m reminded of the truism that the best teams win their divisions in the regular season, but the hot teams win in the post-season playoffs. Why the difference? The regular season is 162 games long, but the post-season consists of just a few brief 5-game and […]
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Another 125 million?
As climate change impacts ramp up over the coming years, we have a serious choice to make. We can try to run in between the raindrops, or we can figure out how to build the equivalent of sturdy, innovative umbrellas. Millions more people, mostly living in the world’s poorest regions, are expected to be directly […]
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Steven Chu doesn’t talk in sound bites
My oh my, how times have changed. For eight years, Washington was run by a crew that seemed to take delight in not sounding brainy, in being plain-spoken and “common-sensical.” Time after time, you’d see reporters banging their heads against the wall when President Bush or his minions would answer complex questions with non-answer answers […]
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Fast action on climate change
This is a guest post from Ted Glick, a long-time progressive and climate activist. More information and contact information can be found at tedglick.com Tomorrow, April 20th, I and over 200 other people around the country and from several countries will be fasting. We’ll be doing so to make a statement that it is long […]
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A Sea Change on film
Ocean acidification is an issue that may not be on everyone’s lips, but its causes, solutions, and dire impacts if gone unaddressed are the same as climate change. A Sea Change (check the trailer below the fold) is a new documentary on the subject that follows retired educator Sven Huseby on a mission to Norway […]
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The unrecognized link between water and energy
Photo: rutloOur nation is in the midst of some serious energy and water problems, but what many may not realize is that these two issues are very closely linked (see the recent Wall Street Journal article on this topic). The truth is that energy and water are related in just about every way you can […]
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Earth Day reflections on food as an environmental issue
Courtesy Stewart via Flickr Michael Pollan ended The Omnivore’s Dilemma with this line: “we eat by the grace of nature, not of industry, and what we’re eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world.” Sustenance, it seems to me, has always been humanity’s most persistent and direct link to the […]
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Me in The New Republic
See here for a guest editorial I just got published in The New Republic. Nothing that I haven’t written about before on Grist, but always nice to get the message about the need to consider generation efficiency (in addition to appliance efficiency) in discussions about how to lower the overall fossil-fuel intensivity of our economy. […]
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Running out the climate clock
The “Countdown to Copenhagen” clock was front and center at the Bonn climate talks last month.Courtesy UNFCC I suppose what happened to the ticking clock says all we need to know about the state of the make-or-break international negotiations on combating climate change. The bright red digital timepiece was affixed to the podium for the […]
