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 […]
To date, over 1,600 people have died and around 14 million people have been affected by the floods in Pakistan which have followed the country’s worst monsoon rains in 80 years. Sir John Holmes, the Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and the Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN, has stated that “if we don’t act […]
With Russia’s worst heatwave on record expected to last for the next ten days, experts begin to worry about the potential for devastating economic losses; in this case, a possible $14 billion off economic growth. On August 5th, Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, announced a ban on grain exports after more than a third of […]
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 […]
A recent BBC article reports that more people are classified as “poor”in India’s eight poorest states than Africa’s 26 poorest countries. In this case, an estimated 421 million Indians are in poverty. Recently, many have argued that the Indian government should replace its inefficient social safety net of subsidized government food, cooking fuel and education […]
(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 […]
I wanted to flag two new books to you and a review of them. The first is The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet by Heidi Cullen and the second is The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Eleventh-Hour Fight to Save the Earth […]
Bonn is home base for the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and it’s where meetings are taking place this week to advance international agreement. With Copenhagen in the rear-view mirror and Cancun up ahead, there is a lot of discussion going of technical matters, and lots of side meetings […]
If increases in global air temperatures or decreases in Arctic sea ice aren’t enough to convince you of the clear and present danger of the climate crisis, then maybe looking at eight other indicators that show the same trend might be. “Past Decade Warmest on Record According to Scientists in 48 Countries – Earth has […]
I might more accurately call this post The Catastrophe of the Senate, but that won’t get us anywhere – for the moment. In any event, as you know by now, the concatenation of Republican anti-environmentalism and fear (and no doubt loathing), plus intransigence from Democratic Senators from states where coal and oil are king, has […]
The NY Times editorial page has, for years and years, been pro-nuclear power. With all the usual blinders on. Whatever. But columnist Bob Herbert had a pretty hard-hitting take last week: “We’re Not Ready.” He likens the blithe indifference on safety at offshore oil rigs to that on nuclear power. There is no way to […]
Speaking of roofs – as we were in the last post below – here’s an item from CleanTechnica on the passage of draft legislation in the Senate Energy Committee to help drive a push toward ten million solar roofs in the US by 2020. This is an analogue to the successful California program this now […]
I’ve said all along that US Energy Secretary Steven Chu is a smart guy. He’s got a Nobel Prize in Physics to prove it. (That’s why I say he’s too smart to be taken in by the ongoing boondoggle that is nuclear power.) Here he is talking about a new study from DOE on white […]