Climate Change

That’s the title of this special report from the Financial Times.  (You can register for free for limited monthly access to the FT online.  It’s worth it.  See also their many RSS feeds.  I subscribe to “Energy Source,” a highly useful blog.) There are articles here on adaptation to climate change, dealing with the critical […]

In the fall of 2007, Australians threw out the government that had been dragging its feet on action on climate change for years.  The first thing that Kevin Rudd, the new Prime Minister, did was to sign the Kyoto Protocol.  Australians had been experiencing the crush of drought and heat and were more than ready […]

“Lisa Jackson is doing exactly what an Environmental Protection Agency Administrator is supposed to do – thoughtfully and carefully but aggressively implementing our environmental laws to protect public health and our environment. The job of the EPA Administrator is not to make people happy but to make them and their environment healthier.”  That was Time’s […]

I took a quick look at Heidi Cullen’s new book The Weather of the Future recently. (I still have to read it. But I’ve got an Ian Rankin and Lester Brown’s Plan B 4.0 ahead of her in the queue.) But don’t wait for me. See her here with Stephen Colbert. Then read the book. […]

I’ve been off the air for a week because we’ve been on vacation:  Vienna for a few days, then down to Istria for some beach, mountains and sight seeing.  We visited a wonderful Croatian national park today:  Risnjak. Meanwhile, here’s just a quick hitter on an item I saw on “green curtains” from the excellent […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about green building this week, as I’ve been working on a big writing project with that, among other things, as an important component.  See also my last post below. I’ve been meaning to flag this article – Slash bills and save the world – from a month ago in the […]

Sounds like a great vacation.  (It is.  I’ve been there a couple of times.)  But the Portuguese are putting their ocean waters, abundant wind and sun to another use as well:  producing renewable energy.  Libby Rosenthal had a characteristically interesting and informative article in the NYT last week on Portugal’s inspiring push to provide 45% […]

Rick Cook is one of the top green architects around.  He and his partner, Bob Fox, designed the truly extraordinary Bank of America Tower, the most sustainable office building in the world today and one of the most aesthetically impressive to boot.  (It’s also the second tallest building in New York City now.) The BofA […]

In an article I wrote for Grist on biochar systems, I noted its virtues: * (potentially) store billions of tons of carbon in soil for centuries; * dramatically reduce agricultural waste, forest debris and some municipal solid waste, thus eliminating the production of greenhouse gases that result from their decomposition; * generate energy to both […]

That, of course, is the title of James Baldwin’s famous two-essay collection.  Baldwin took it from the old spiritual, “Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep.” “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!” Well, I don’t like to get all biblical, but I bet a lot of folks in Russia and […]

(copyright Lee Lorenz and The New Yorker) This recent New Yorker cartoon reminded me of the old Wizard of Id strip that I referenced in my post on Nature’s Way.

Dysfunctional Senate seems to me to be redundant.  Nevertheless, there are those who, with noses held closed, continue to try to deal with a legislative body that is, by its very nature, undemocratic, and by long habit, works in ways that are infuriatingly inappropriate to the creation of good public policy.  What choice do we […]