Culture & Ethics
The Low-Carbon Meat Diet
If you’re like me, you like meat. Especially red meat, like a pepper-crusted steak or a juicy burger drizzled with bleu cheese. But if you’re also like me, you’re concerned about climate change and the impact that our lifestyle has on the planet. While hyrbids and CFL light bulbs get a lot of attention, Ezra …
Continue reading “The Low-Carbon Meat Diet”
CONTINUE READING“It is not natural…
…for a man to write this well every day.” So commented the great literary critic Alfred Kazin on Henry David Thoreau’s Journal, which he kept quite regularly from his Harvard College graduation in 1837 to just a few months before his death. Kazin is right: the Journal is a real gem of American letters and …
Continue reading ““It is not natural…”
CONTINUE READINGSmall Steps on Nanosilver
Regulation often develops through accretion rather than bold paradigm shifts, at least in its nascent stages. Nanotechnology appears to be no exception. In mid-September, the agency announced an upcoming meeting of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) focused on the use of nanoscale silver and other nanomaterials in pesticides. …
Continue reading “Small Steps on Nanosilver”
CONTINUE READINGClimate Change Lesson #4: Small Ordinary Things Add Up in a Big Way
This is the fourth in a series of short homilies about climate change. In terms of climate change, the contribution of any one automobile, light bulb, or felled tree is microscopic. Put enough of these together and you can change the temperature of the world for centuries to come. It’s hard to believe – and …
Continue reading “Climate Change Lesson #4: Small Ordinary Things Add Up in a Big Way”
CONTINUE READINGClimate Change Lesson #3: Everything is Connected to Everything Else
This is the third in a series of short homilies about the lessons of climate change. Barry Commoner called this the first law of ecology. Because “everything is connected to everything else,” he said: the system is stabilized by its dynamic self- compensating properties; these same properties, if overstressed, can lead to a dramatic collapse; …
Continue reading “Climate Change Lesson #3: Everything is Connected to Everything Else”
CONTINUE READINGHow useful are “planetary boundaries”?
The latest edition of Nature has an interesting article and accompanying commentaries (freely available here; longer version of the principal article here) on the concept of boundaries, or limits, or thresholds if you prefer, for the planet. The principal article, which has 27 authors led by Johan Rockstrom of the Stockholm Resilience Center, is called …
Continue reading “How useful are “planetary boundaries”?”
CONTINUE READINGEid Mubarak: Islam and the Environment
This evening, Muslims around the world are celebrating the end of Ramadan. All the talk of political Islam has overlooked the question of what, if anything, Islam says about the environment, and a short blog post can hardly be comprehensive. My initial reading of the Qu’ran reveals something that should be unremarkable to those who have …
Continue reading “Eid Mubarak: Islam and the Environment”
CONTINUE READINGIn Defense of Impact Men (and Women)
Full disclosure: I haven’t seen the new film documentary opening this weekend in LA and NY, “No Impact Man,” based on the nonfiction book of the same title, by Colin Beavan, that depicts his urban family of three trying — impossibly, of course — to shrink to nothing its environmental footprint, even going as far as to give up …
Continue reading “In Defense of Impact Men (and Women)”
CONTINUE READINGRising Seas: Doing the Math
Real Climate has a very interesting if occasionally highly technical post on sea level rise. There’s considerable disagreement about projections. Some projections rely on detailed modeling of the dynamics; others are based on fitting a model to past changes, more or less the way economists do modeling. The latter, “semi-empirical” projects are also in some …
Continue reading “Rising Seas: Doing the Math”
CONTINUE READINGOne Step Backward, One Nano Step Forward. . . Maybe
The action on nanomaterials continued at the federal level in August, advancing forward in one area (tentatively) and faltering in another (perhaps temporarily). First, on August 4, the Interagency Testing Committee (ITC) issued its 64th report. (The ITC is an independent advisory committee charged with identifying potentially toxic chemicals for which there is inadequate testing …
Continue reading “One Step Backward, One Nano Step Forward. . . Maybe”
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
