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A road map that misses some turns

A road map that misses some turns A review of No Miracles Needed Mark Jacobson’s new book, greeted with hosannas by some leading environmentalists, is full of good ideas – but the whole is less than the sum of its parts. No Miracles Needed, by Mark Z. Jacobson, published by Cambridge University Press, Feb 2023. 437 […]

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Dreaming of clean green flying machines

Dreaming of clean green flying machines In common with many other corporate lobby groups, the International Air Transport Association publicly proclaims their commitment to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.1 Yet the evidence that such an achievement is likely, or even possible, is thin … to put it charitably. Unless, that is, major airlines simply shut […]

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Colonialism, climate crisis, and the forever wars

Colonialism, climate crisis, and the forever wars Two rounds of negotiation take centre stage, about halfway through Amitav Ghosh’s new masterwork The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. In one, US State Department and Pentagon officials win agreement that carbon emissions connected with the military are to be kept out of the Kyoto Protocol […]

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Reclaiming hope from the dismal science

Reclaiming hope from the dismal science Post Growth is published by Polity Press, 2021. “Empowering and elegiac” might seem a strange description of a book on economics. Yet the prominent author and former economics minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, chooses that phrase of praise for the new book Post Growth, by Tim Jackson. In many respects the […]

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Going to extremes

Going to extremes It only took us a century to use up the best of the planet’s finite reserves of fossil fuels. The dawning century will be a lot different. In the autumn of 1987 I often sipped my morning coffee while watching a slow parade roll through the hazy dawn. I had given up […]

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The fat-takers cross the oceans

The fat-takers cross the oceans Ecological overshoot is a global crisis today, but the problem did not begin with the fossil fuel age. From its beginnings more than five centuries ago, European colonization has been based on an unsustainable exploitation of resources. In Seeker of Visions, John (Fire) Lame Deer says “The Sioux have a name […]

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Energy storage and our unpredictable future

Energy storage and our unpredictable future March 4, 2020 A review of Energy Storage and Civilization It’s a fine spring day and you decide on a whim to go camping. By early afternoon you’ve reached a sheltered clearing in the woods, the sky is clear, and you relax against a tree trunk rejoicing that “The best […]

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Platforms for a Green New Deal

Platforms for a Green New Deal Two new books in review Does the Green New Deal assume a faith in “green growth”? Does the Green New Deal make promises that go far beyond what our societies can afford? Will the Green New Deal saddle ordinary taxpayers with huge tax bills? Can the Green New Deal […]

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Questions as big as the atmosphere

Questions as big as the atmosphere A review of After Geoengineering After Geoengineering is published by Verso Books, Oct 1 2019. What is the best-case scenario for solar geoengineering? For author Holly Jean Buck and the scientists she interviews, the best-case scenario is that we manage to keep global warming below catastrophic levels, and the idea of geoengineering […]

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Designing Climate Solutions – a big-picture view that doesn’t skimp on details

Designing Climate Solutions – a big-picture view that doesn’t skimp on details Let us pause for a moment of thanks to the policy wonks, who work within the limitations of whatever is currently politically permissible and take important steps forward in their branches of bureaucracy. Let us also give thanks to those who cannot work within those […]

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The clean green pipeline machine – a free-market fairy tale

The clean green pipeline machine – a free-market fairy tale A review of Donald Gutstein’s The Big Stall In late 2016 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was ready to spell out his government’s “Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change”. His pitch to Canadians went along these lines: We recognize that climate change is […]

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Can nuclear power extend the economic expansion?

Can nuclear power extend the economic expansion? Richard Rhodes’ new book Energy: A Human History does an excellent job of describing the scientific and technological hurdles that had to be cleared in the development of, for example, an internal combustion engine which can convert refined petroleum into forward motion. But he gives short shrift to […]

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Energy: A Human History – a slim slice of history and science

Energy: A Human History – a slim slice of history and science “The population of the earth has increased more than sevenfold since 1850 – from one billion to seven and a half billion – primarily because of science and technology,” Richard Rhodes concludes at the end of his new book Energy: A Human History. […]

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Speeding Down a Dead End Road

Speeding Down a Dead End Road Since the birth of car culture more than a century ago, lavish consumption of energy has not been a bug but a feature. That’s now a feature we can ill afford, as we attempt the difficult and urgent task of transition to renewable energies. Notwithstanding all the superlatives lavished […]

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A fascinating, flawed look at limits

A fascinating, flawed look at limits A review of The Wizard and The Prophet Charles C. Mann has written consecutive bestsellers of popular history writ large. His 1491 surveyed the civilizations of the pre-Columbian Americas, while 1493 looked at how post-Columbian America has affected the whole world. The Wizard and the Prophet, by Charles C. […]

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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