The big Muddy River’s long, turbulent relationship with coal
Southern Illinois has been coal country for quite some time. Men first mined coal there in 1810, when they took the black rock from outcroppings…
Articles
These African World Heritage Sites are under threat from climate change
Very few academics or policy makers are talking about the impact of climate change on heritage. Yet heritage is essential for social wellbeing, for identity…
Why green energy finally makes economic sense
Renewable energy experts have long hoped that solar and wind power would someday become the cheapest way to generate electricity, allowing the world to shift…
South Korea subsidizing biomass so heavily that wind and solar are being crowded out of the market
The government of South Korea is subsidizing the development of biomass power so heavily that it’s hindering the adoption of renewable energy technologies like solar…
Nothing as it seems
One of the most unexpected gifts of the Covid-19 lockdown: after nearly half a century the Himalayan peaks are visible from Nepal’s Kathmandu valley, 200…
Energy’s lost weekend
The coronavirus pandemic is first and foremost a health crisis, but it will have long-lasting effects on most areas of the global economy, not least…
Climate change forces virus migration
“All the world is topsy-turvy, and it has been topsy-turvy ever since the plague.” This quote is from The Scarlet Plague written by Jack London…
Design a doughnut-shaped city: a change-proof approach
How can cities become socially just and secure homes for people while respecting the health of the planet in a post-pandemic world? Is protecting the…
As sea level rise threatens their ancestral village, a Louisiana tribe fights to stay put
Ten years ago, as news of the BP oil disaster reached Louisiana’s Grand Bayou Indian Village, Rosina Philippe dispatched her brother Maurice Phillips on a…
The soil solution
On a steely November morning, Dorn Cox tours me around the dairy farm where he works in Freeport, Maine. The hummocky coastal landscape has begun…
Methanol: from grim to green
Isolated for the first time in 1661 by the Irish chemist and physicist Robert Boyle from the distillation of boxwood, methanol (or methyl alcohol) was…
Investors’ role in a carbon-neutral 2050
Internationally only a handful of pension funds have committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 and have developed an approach to achieving that goal. In…
Avenger Planet: is the Covid-19 Pandemic Mother Nature’s response to human transgression?
As the coronavirus sweeps across the planet, leaving death and mayhem in its wake, many theories are being expounded to explain its ferocity. One, widely…
Next Up: The Climate Emergency
My new book went to press just as the coronavirus pandemic was starting. If I were still working on The Green New Deal and Beyond:…
East Perth
The abandoned East Perth Power Station is one of Australia’s most significant industrial heritage buildings due to its unique assortment of machinery and equipment that…
Mexico City is proposing to build one of the world’s largest urban parks. Will it serve as a climate adaptation example for other cities?
An architect and officials are hoping that a huge park in Mexico City can restore the water systems of the region and serve as a…