Ride for the climate from New York City to Washington DC, September 26 – 30. That’s the story of the Brita Climate Ride. In addition to raising a lot of consciousness, the two hundred riders will benefit the work of Focus the Nation, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, and Clean Air – Cool Planet. The United Nations […]
The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) released a report this week revealing Britain’s food supply vulnerabilities and strategies for combating a domestic shortage should the ongoing global crisis intensify. Although the UK is largely self-sufficient with regards to food production, the Defra plan focuses largely on increasing that productivity, perhaps through […]
I’m delighted that an article I’ve done on biochar for Grist went “live” today. If you don’t know about the extraordinary potential here, check out the article, Biochar as the new black gold. Even if you do, I think it’s worth a visit. It’s part of a Grist Special Series, What’s the deal with offsets? […]
The Washington Post reported on the effects of the global food crisis in Nigeria, where 38% of children under 5 years old are starving and 65% of its population is unsure of the source of their next meal. Nigeria has been unable to exploit its agricultural resources despite its wealth from having the largest oil […]
For you tomato lovers out there, good luck this season. According to Dan Barber’s op-ed piece in the New York Times, tomatoes have been scarce this year, especially in the Northeast United States, and we’ve already seen price increases of 20%. So what’s the problem? Late blight—the same plant disease that caused the Irish potato […]
You will notice in this diagram from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) depicting the total electricity flow in the US for 2008 that “conversion losses” account for 63% of the energy generated. Got that?! Nearly two thirds of the energy used to make electricity, 51% of that from coal, 21% from nuclear, and 17% from […]
Green tech leaders meeting this week in Las Vegas at the National Clean Energy Summit conference sponsored by Democratic Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid used the opportunity to complain about the lack of government support. Despite recent announcements from the Obama Administration that some initiatives are moving, the money is not going out the door […]
Yet another major emerging economy is planning to come to the table in Copenhagen ready to contribute. Mexico aims to bring CO2 cut plan to climate talks reports Reuters. Adrian Fernandez, the president of the National Ecology Institute, said “If Mexico can bring a plan for cuts through 2020 to the table with a detailed […]
As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, India is a critical part of the equation in solving the climate crisis, but is extremely sensitive to suggestions that it needs to quantify emission reduction targets. The Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, has been keeping to a very hard line. “Treehugger” reports here that India Says Yes […]
United States and China to Cooperate on Climate Change and Energy is the word from the excellent weekly, “EERE Network News,” put out by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). As I noted recently here, DOE Secretary Steven Chu was in China recently and the pressure is building on the Chinese to […]
A recent article in the “LA Times” about the projected boom in hydropower caught my eye this morning because one of my students asked last night about the growth of hydro in the US. I told her that it was my perception that hydroelectric use was not growing. That has certainly been the trend in […]
I had the good fortune to be involved with some very smart activists back in the 1980s who were working on acid rain. One of these was the Environmental Defense Fund’s senior scientist Michael Oppenheimer. Michael’s been at Princeton for a number of years and among his many projects, he co-curated the compelling climate change […]
I’ve written about the revolution in low-tech. “Teach us delight in simple things …” are words, in my opinion, by which to live. I wrote about a different view of freedom in which the idea of using less energy and consuming fewer resources might actually be construed as liberating. I’ve quoted Bill McKibben in my […]
India is under pressure to come forward with more assertive action indicating it is going to take part in a mandatory regime of greenhouse gas reductions. It has, unfortunately, been saying much the opposite: that it will not sign up to quantifiable emission reductions. (See last post below.) China and India have been marching, if […]
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is off to India to talk of many things, not the least of which is climate change. In a session at the Council on Foreign Relations earlier in the week, she said “We know that India and China have understandable questions about what role they should be expected to play […]