Media & Communications

Wind industry growing in blue and red states alike

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As Paul Krugman’s New York Times Magazine cover story on environmental economics, “Building the Green Economy,” was ricocheting around the enviro blogosphere last week, the American Wind Energy Association released its annual report on the state of the wind industry.

The natural world vanishes: how species cease to matter

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If you are a resident of the East Coast of the United States or of Western Europe, when did you last attend a shad bake, eat an eel, or watch Atlantic salmon vault a waterfall? Community shad bakes once celebrated the return of American shad to rivers as a marker of spring. Recently though, a dearth of shad led to a “shadless shad bake” on the Hudson — a river that in its glory days supplied more than four million pounds of shad in one season.

Peak Moment 166: The crash course — exponential growth meets reality

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“The next twenty years will be totally unlike the last twenty… We’ll face the greatest economic and physical challenges ever seen by our country, if not humanity.” So opens Chris Martenson’s much-viewed online Crash Course illuminating the relationship between economy, energy and the environment. Starting with the power of exponential growth, he tidily sums up our economic problems: Too Much Debt. Chris discusses the implications if we continue the status quo, and ways to prepare. He believes that “if we manage the transition elegantly we can actually improve things.”

Making nickels squeak: clothing edition

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Due to the weirdly warm weather (which has now departed for a few days of normalish April weather) that we had last week, I saw a spring sight to gladden the heart of almost anyone – a yard sale. It wasn’t at a time I could shop, and it wasn’t like I wanted anything they had – but still, the re-emergence of yard sales is like the return of the redwing blackbirds, a sign of hope.

The imperative of reforming U.S. foreign aid to empower women

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Perverse incentives provided by tax codes and government subsidies are an ongoing theme of my articles in The Daly News. These perverse incentives pervade all sectors of the economy and undermine the hope for a prosperous and healthy civilization that lives in harmony with the earth. A paradigm shift away from the present destructive global economic model must entail the elimination of taxes and subsidies that reward pollution and injustice.

Eds, meds and a sustainable Pittsburgh

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Forecasts of Pittsburgh’s future cite education and medicine, complemented by entrepreneurial “green energy” and high-tech ventures, as engines of 21st century growth. However, the country is entering its third year of economic contraction and fiscal crisis.

How to Drive your Elephant – Dealing with Complex Problems

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One thing that has always intrigued me about elephants is how the people who drive them manage to control the beast without a harness. There have to be ways, since it can be done, but it cannot be simple. So elephant driving may be seen as as a metaphor for controlling complex systems. What you’ll find below is a talk that I gave on this subject at a recent meeting in Italy. It is not a transcription, but a version written from memory that tries to maintain the style and the sense of what I said.