Articles by JMG

Wind farms or poor farms?

The torpor with which we here in the U.S. are responding to strong, clear, and persistent signals that the old era -- of abundant cheap energy in a stable climate -- is ending is nothing short of astonishing.

The fact that supposedly serious people could have a debate about tourism vs. offshore wind turbines is astounding.

Implicit in such a discussion is the premise that tourism is going to continue even if we don't build a lot of ways to attain a lot of non-fossil energy.

Perhaps the best best way to understand stories like that is to consult a book outside the "environmental" section -- an oldie about what happens when people in power ignore strong, clear, and persistent signals that what they're doing isn't making it: The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman.

Charcoal carbon sequestration — birth of a new CO2 removal wedge?

I would love to hear Graham Nash and David Crosby rerecord their old "Carry Me" song about agrichar and removing carbon from the atmosphere while revitalizing soils:

"Bury me, buuuu-reee me, bury me, across the world ..."

This is sounding so good it's scary -- like I am being set up to have my bubble burst when it turns out to violate one or more basic physical laws, or only be net negative by ignoring some huge emissions somewhere in the process, or whatever. But for today, I'm going to feel a little better:

Sawing off the limbs we’ve climbed up to see

From the article "Holiday at the End of the Earth: Tourists Paying to See Global Warming in Action," posted on Common Dreams:

"The idea of global-warming tourism is full of ironies," he said. "If enough people expend enough fossil fuels to visit one Warming Island, they will ensure that there will be many more."

Cities find that people like not being killed by cars!

Good story in the Christian Science Monitor about places that are taking steps (albeit tiny, tiny baby steps) to take back some of the public space given over to cars and letting people use it: