We’re up in Cambridge, Mass., and were over at the MIT Museum yesterday. One exhibit looked at the work of Daniel Nocera and his colleagues on developing a new catalytic process to convert water to oxygen and hydrogen. There is wonderful potential in this to create a zero carbon, closed loop distributed energy system. The […]
I had a very busy end of the week and now I’m out of town, so I haven’t been reporting. Here, however, are two pretty interesting reads for you, from two of my favorite writers. The first is from Fiona Harvey, indefatigable environmental correspondent for the FT. She has some unkind words for some of […]
I wrote, in the wake of the shameful Chinese performance in Copenhagen, about China, Climate and Trade. A couple of days after that post, there was an excellent analysis in the “FT” and I wrote a letter to the editor, alas unpublished. Here’s the letter now: Geoff Dyer rightly wonders “…whether China’s political system is […]
I’ve wondered out loud here several times about convergence – getting our galloping consumption down in the developed world while simultaneously raising the standard of living for the citizens of developing nations. You can do this a thousand different ways, most of which can “cool” the planet. One critical approach is for developing economies to […]
I wrote here a while ago about food miles – see under Transportation of Food. I looked at two arguments: that the long distances we transport food has a discernible impact on the production of greenhouse gases – and that it doesn’t. From what I’ve been reading over the past couple of years, the weight […]
The excellent “Green Energy Reporter” had an item noting a new study on mountaintop removal mining and Stephen Colbert’s take. There are huge environmental and health impacts associated with coal mining, as I’ve noted a number of times, here and here, among others. Now a group of scientists, led by the University of Maryland’s Dr. […]
One dictionary I consulted gave several definitions for reaction: 1. a. A response to a stimulus. b. The state resulting from such a response. 2. A reverse or opposing action. 3. a. A tendency to revert to a former state. b. Opposition to progress or liberalism; extreme conservatism. What I gather from this is that […]
Parade of hybrids zips through Detroit is the headline from SmartPlanet. They give you a nice rundown of the hybrid and electric vehicles that took over the (very) big Detroit auto show. I’m not much of a car person, but even I can tell you that just about every automaker seems to be fully on […]
But that sure doesn’t have anything to do with “global cooling.” In fact, according to the British Met Office, 2010 may well be the warmest year on record. (2009 was the fifth warmest.) Further, as the Met Office, among others, have pointed out, it’s not cold everywhere in the world. Joe Romm had this item […]
I was talking with an old friend last week about how much renewable energy and energy efficiency can do for us. Pretty much everything is my argument. We are making progress along these lines that is sometimes breathtaking. There was a breakthrough announcement on renewable energy last week from the British: They will be deploying […]
Nature has been designing things better and for a lot longer than people have. We seem to have a tendency to waste energy and resources in our design. We also tend to create byproducts in our production processes that can – and usually do – have all sorts of negative impacts, not only for ourselves […]
I went to this event several weeks ago and came away with a great feeling about where urban agriculture and the global movement for “cooler” approaches to farming and eating are heading. I’ve written any number of times here about food and agriculture, including this view into the work of one particularly amazing urban farmer. […]
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