Climate Doom Fatigue
Over at Climate Central, I ask: Can we have a sustainable conversation on climate change?
Author Archive
Former BBC Reporter Pulls Back the Curtain
UPDATE: I just noticed this talk is a year old. Still, it’s pretty fascinating. Anyone interested in how the journalistic sausage gets made in the UK, about the cozy relationship between British reporters and politicians, about how climate change gets covered in the media, should watch this revealing talk by Sarah Mukherjee, who until recently was…Continue Reading…
The Art of Graceful Collapses
On a recent post of mine at Climate Central, one reader left an impassioned comment that sounded as if he considered overpopulation to be the greatest threat to humanity. I’m going to break it up into three parts. Here’s the challenge, as he explained it: An even more overlooked problem is overpopulation (defined as living…Continue Reading…
Climate Bait
Michael Levi sounds almost bemused as he’s filleting the authors of this argument for a carbon tax: These are very smart guys. The puzzle for me, then, is why they believe what they’ve written. I can’t help but think that there’s a case of climate change myopia at work. A big slice of the political spectrum…Continue Reading…
The Energy Wonk Fight Is Missing a Key Player
This is good that The Breakthrough Institute (TBI) is calling out the Heritage Foundation. Even better would be if TBI’s Post-Partisan Power collaborator, the American Enterprise Institute, pushed back, too. Or is this a fight that Steven Hayward would rather avoid? I guess it depends on how strongly he feels about that part in the Post-Partisan…Continue Reading…
Birthers and Climate Denial
Over at Dot Earth, Andy Revkin engages in some hippie punching. (I’m being facetious–that’s David Roberts’ favorite term for anyone who criticizes progressives on climate politics and policy.) Here’s Revkin making an equivalence between “Birthers” and a segment of the climate community that remains stuck in its own echo chamber: It’s easy to forget that…Continue Reading…
Biosphere 2 Has a New Mission
Ever wondered what came of this famous science experiment in the Arizona desert? As Allen Breed in an AP story this week recalls, Jane Poynter and seven compatriots agreed to spend two years sealed inside a 3-acre terrarium in the Sonoran Desert. Their mission back in the 1990s: To see whether humans might someday be able to…Continue Reading…
The Frankenstein Candidate
This headline says it all: Ron Paul hates energy subsidies, doubts climate change, and loves riding his bike
Arab Revolts & the Climate Connection
Over at Climate Central, I discuss this recent essay that argues climate change has “played a necessary role” in the uprisings sweeping through the Arab world since January.
On Technology, Climate Change & Nuclear Power
Eduardo Zorita packs a lot into this post. I’m not sure it coheres but it’s quite interesting. He touches on the importance of expert authorities and the IPCC and muses on “the interaction between technology and democracy”: We have now several new technologies that have been developed in the last few decades, which the individuals…Continue Reading…