A friend sent me this wonderful piece in which Popular Mechanics lists its top predictions on what life on this planet will be like in the year 2050 and beyond. I hope you’ll check it out; it’s really worthwhile, and …
Tag: loss of biodiversity
Was Obama Terrified of Coal?
Frequent commenter MarcoPolo writes: How much difference a mere nine months can make! One of President Obama’s few real accomplishments was his irrational hatred of the US coal industry. In a mere eight years, President Obama contributed to massive job …
Comprehending the Universe Would Be Nice, But It Could Be Impossible–Or Of No Real Value
As we learned in the early 20th Century, depending on the circumstance, light can behave either as a particle or a wave. Want to see the wave nature of light? Set up a double slit experiment (see photo on left) …
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Fighting for Environmental Protection
Though we tend to think of current-day U.S. politics as being the most contentious ever in our history, that’s not the case. There have been many such periods, starting with the American Revolution itself, in which 70% of the colonists …
The Arc of the Moral Universe: What Can We Expect?
Here’s a question posed by a certain Steve Charleston: I have a simple question for people of faith around the world: must it always be so? Must human history always be written as the aftermath of competition between the few …
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Tagged with: Age of Reason, ascendancy of Donald Trump, but it bends towards justice, Climate Change, end of Apartheid, Enlightenment, human civilization has become increasingly rational less brutal, it's up to every person of decency and compassion to make a daily effort to bend the arc of the moral universe in the right direction, loss of biodiversity, Magna Carta, ocean acidification, prospect of world fascism, Renaissance, the abolition of slavery, The Arc of the Moral Universe, The arc of the moral universe is long, the Geneva Convention, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, U.S. Constitution, women's suffrage
Optimism in the Face of Environmental Pressures
A young reader notes: (Through my religion), I now see hope for this planet where I had not seen any before. I was in fear that I would see the end of the planet during my lifetime. Now I see …
Tagged with: environmentalist, hugely toxic effects of fossil fuels, leaders of the world don’t care about climate change, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, survive environmental damage, wiping out the entirety of the progress that had been made in the direction of environmental stewardship over the past half-century in the U.S.
The Depletion of Fossil Fuels
Here’s a question that I just fielded on Quora.com (which is a very cool website, btw). When will fossil fuels be depleted? Never. Yes, there is a finite amount of coal, oil, and natural gas beneath the Earth’s surface, and …
Tagged with: Climate Change, Depletion of Fossil Fuels, environmental destruction, fossil fuel extraction is becoming unattractive, fossil resources, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, probability of environmental destruction, When will fossil fuels be depleted?, worsening outcomes for human health
Speaking at the International Trade Forum
I’ve been asked to speak at a conference next month in Connecticut, and I thought readers may be interested in my outline for the talk: Why cleantech is destined to become the defining industry of the 21st Century Tech in …
Tagged with: but both are occurring simultaneously Carrot/stick: Incentives to lower emissions, but will all arenas within cleantech achieve success? Hell no. Technology innovation, carbon tax The footprint associated with producing red meat Population growth OK, certainly not Washington. Either one will make this happen in a big way, cleantech destined to become the defining industry of the 21st Century, Climate Change, economics and politics (the “tough realities”) all conspire to make this very interesting. So where is this going? I can’t predict the future, electric transportation coming into the mainstream, factors driving the growth of Cleantech, human health issues, internalizing the externalities of fossil fuel consumption. This is being driven by grassroots, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification
Understanding the Subject of Sustainability from Two Opposite Directions
Here’s a short post in response to the altercation between two frequent commenters here, MarcoPolo and Cameron. To summarize this beef in a sentence, Cameron feels passionately that our civilization is headed for a fall due to its shortsightedness on …
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A Few Good Reasons to Short Oil Companies’ Stock
It certainly will be interesting to see how the stock market responds to the situation in which the oil companies will soon find themselves. There are several aspects of this, none of them good for share-holders (though very good for …
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