There is a very good story in the NYT about an initiative being launched today to finance clean-burning cookstoves for the developing world. I have written about the pernicious health impacts of burning biomass in open fires and the burden of black carbon deposition that so badly exacerbates global warming. The NY Times reports “Nearly […]
Tom Friedman’s latest column, Dreaming the Possible Dream, touches on some companies and their promising technologies that we’ve seen here, namely Calera (cement) and Bloomenergy (fuel cells.) Everybody has seen the hype for Bloomenergy. I sincerely hope they live long and prosper. I quoted Bill McKibben here a while ago in his review of a […]
What could be a more quintessentially human activity? Our food tastes better and is usually much safer to eat when it’s cooked. (There is something to be said, don’t get me wrong, for the raw foods approach too. I’ve been a vegetarian for … what year is this? … a long time and I do […]
Here is a big boost for low-tech, low-cost, potentially very high-impact solutions to “dangerous anthropogenic interference” (DAI) with the climate system: a solar-powered cooker that costs less than $5 to build. I wrote about the FT’s Climate Change Challenge last month here. The FT and its partners, Forum for the Future and HP, are providing […]
I touched on an important subject here earlier in the month when I mentioned a new study purporting that the spread of black carbon , or soot , from industrial and transportation sources, and from developing world cooking practices, is having a significantly more potent impact on climate change than previously thought. This release from […]
I continue to be fascinated by the burgeoning of all sorts of new approaches to generating energy and saving energy. I mentioned in my post from May 16 on the Large Cities Summit that George David, the CEO of United Technologies, had some fascinating things to say about using energy and the potential for radically […]