As we pump gasoline into our automobiles, we watch the register ring up dollars, but we don’t see the water cost: some 13 gallons for every gallon of fuel. It’s one of the most inconvenient truths of modern times that...
It is hard to imagine a more unlikely vehicle for advancing energy literacy than a finely crafted large format picture book. Energy, after all, is invisible. We see its effects, but never the thing itself. And yet, Energy: Overdevelopment...
Elephant Butte Dam on the Rio Grande in New Mexico. Photo by Sandra Postel As climate change alters rainfall patterns and river flows, tensions are bound to rise between states and countries that share rivers that cross their borders....
I hadn’t heard of James Balog, whose work is the subject of ‘Chasing Ice’, until I saw him give a presentation at TED Global in Oxford in 2008. It was in a session after supper, along with Nigeran novelist...
This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post. Idle No More Pow-Wow outside the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on January 7. Photo by Steve McCullough. I don’t claim to know exactly what’s going on with #IdleNoMore, the...
Credit: Radio Ecoshock | Download Endless growth is a delusion with consequences…The spiral of climate change, peak energy, and economic crisis, with author Richard Heinberg. Fresh interview on giant new book Energy: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth. Followed by speech...
Abundance Threatened? Fish are abundant in Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake. Photo by Jane Baldwin. Over the last century, the construction of big dams to generate power, supply water and control floods has unleashed a damaging...
There are many forces at work in our world today – climate change, the Arab Spring, population growth, and mass migrations to name a few. Some of these forces may come to impact our lives in the coming year...
Lately, as I ponder our societal response, or lack of it, to the challenging times ahead – the droughts and floods and heat waves and crop failures, which we’ve tasted only as appetizers so far – I find myself...
Change usually happens very slowly, even once all the serious people have decided there’s a problem. That’s because, in a country as big as the United States, public opinion moves in slow currents. Since change by definition requires going...