Last Thursday, the U.S. Government announced its concentrated efforts to reduce global hunger and poverty in 20 countries through an ambitious strategy document known as Feed the Future. Feed the Future reflects steps taken by the U.S. Government to reach its UN Millennium Development Goal of reducing the number of people suffering from hunger and […]
The Rolling Stones knew it years ago.* Now we’re catching up. I’ve written about natural gas a few times, basically to the effect that it’s got enormous potential as a transition fuel for many purposes as we wend our way, sooner rather than later, toward a renewable future. This is what the prophetic Barry Commoner […]
Otarian is the name of the new chain. I’m all over this.
I’ve just finished reading this terrific history of the American environmental movement by Phil Shabecoff. He was America’s first environmental reporter and he’s quite the historian too. The title comes from a line from Aldo Leopold’s poignant essay “Thinking Like a Mountain.” He recounts the grand sweep of how Americans have treated their air, lands […]
I was interviewing a world-class expert on energy and the environment yesterday for a project I’m on, and the discussion came around to many environmentalists’ distrust of cap-and-trade and other modes of “market-friendly” environmental activity. I was reminded of the video from Nathaniel Keohane, Environmental Defense Fund’s Director of Economic Policy and Analysis. (It is […]
In the spirit of yesterday’s photos of the Gulf of Mexico, this photo essay from Newsweek is also resonant. I would’ve added the Canadian tar sands and mountaintop removal mining.
Here, courtesy of NASA, is a look at two Gulf of Mexico dead zones: one well established, as a consequence of runoff (manure, fertilizer, wastewater treatment plant effluent, etc.) from the breadbasket of the US, and the other in the making, from BP’s disastrous well blowout.
So at this point I have the score, in a sane world, about ten to nothing against nuclear power. (See previous two posts below.) Here are a few more points against: Perhaps the most telling argument against nuclear power, in market economies anyway, is the failure of nuclear power to compete. Amory Lovins, in his […]
Accidents happen, but the BP mess in the Gulf was an accident waiting to happen, which is not the same thing — faulty blowout preventer, faulty shears, faulty cement job, lack of blowout plan, possible lack of required permits, definite lack of oversight by the US Mineral Management Service. At the same time, quite below […]
Yesterday I mentioned a number of big-ticket reasons to think that nuclear power is a very bad bet indeed: It bleeds money from smarter, cheaper and much more climate-friendly options; it’s dangerous; it’s radically inefficient; it’s not, at the end of the day – that is to say, through the whole life cycle – a […]
I am, of course, borrowing from George H.W. Bush’s timeless declaration. But what’s really at issue here? There is no sense at all in building new nuclear capability in this country or, for that matter, any other. In my classes on climate change and on clean tech, I identify nuclear power, along with carbon capture […]
The 1billionhungry project is a petition campaign launched to call attention to the fact that there are 1 billion people around the world who suffer from hunger, and to urge people to demand action from politicians and policymakers. British actor Jeremy Irons appears in a short video for the campaign, echoing Peter Finch’s 1976 performance […]
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