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  • Meet the Climate Fockers

    Here’a repost from my Climateprogress.org blog today:   A business colleague and friend recently had a nice conversation with his brother, a doctor visiting from the South. His brother doesn’t think climate change is a problem. It went something like this: Brother: “I’ve been reading some interesting articles about climate change that don’t….” Colleague: “Shut […]

  • What is the Call to Action on Climate?

      Today I got a call from a rock concert producer. “We care about climate. We want to get the audience to act. What is the call to action?” This is a deceptively simply question, but it’s also THE question of our age. Meanwhile, I’ve been asked “what should I do?”  by audience members, by […]

  • The choices we'll have to make to save the world

    I was in the rec center pool on a snowy May afternoon recently talking to my friend Dave as my kids sloshed around in what struck me as a massive inoculation tank. As usual, nerds that we are, we talked about energy efficiency in our houses. Dave recently had an energy an audit, and like […]

  • Beyond Petroleum

    My friend Dean was mostly drunk rowing his raft down the Grand Canyon. He was also naked most of the time, except for a piece of climbing webbing around his waist, ostensibly to help him if the raft flipped. As he headed into the huge rapids of the Inner Gorge, Dean used to cackle and […]

  • Before the Massey mine disaster, there was Crandall Canyon

    I’m reposting an essay I wrote in 2007 about another mine disaster. It’s relevant to what’s happening now in West Virginia. In March 2007, I testified before a House subcommittee on energy and mineral resources about the impact of climate change on public lands. There were seven witnesses, and one was Robert Murray, founder of […]

  • Olympic broadcast wins gold for vapidity

    While eagerly watching Bode Miller and the men's downhill Olympic race yesterday, I was treated to an unbelievably vapid interlude by Mary Carillo on the Polar Bears of Churchill, Manitoba, which she showed to Bob Costas. The whole time I was waiting for someone to take this great opportunity to talk about climate change in front of a massive audience. After all, with the bears, there's really obvious stuff going on.

  • Dispatches from the Phoenix Green Building Conference

    Recently, an interior designer and massage therapist named Becky Anderson helped me certify an Aspen Skiing Company building (Sam’s Restaurant) to LEED Gold. As a reward for her remarkable work, we sent her to the U.S. Green Building Council’s enormous, happening-like, and increasingly burning-man scale annual conference, which took place in Phoenix this fall and […]

  • How do I find a green job?

    This is the time-honored question, one I get asked so frequently, from very qualified individuals, that I decided to answer it online. It is heartbreaking (and encouraging) how many skilled and interested people are looking for work in the sustainability field. The good news is the sector is growing exponentially. If you ask anyone in […]

  • Climate change and God

    There’s a great new book out called How the West Was Warmed (www.howthewestwaswarmed.com), about responding to climate change in the Rockies. It’s got intros and conclusions from two of the nation’s leading implementers/rock stars of the new green economy–Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. It also offers readers a candy store […]