At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
DENVER –– Beyond what the Democrats contend is the epic misrule of the Bush administration, and beyond what the Obama campaign asserts is Senator John McCain’s obeisance to a belligerent president lies Senator Barack Obama’s new frame for the 2008 presidential election. Here are its pieces. America is in peril. Obama is the man to fix it. And the most powerful tool at his disposal is developing a clean energy, good jobs economy that ends …
A new American narrative is coming to the fore, and recognizable in the patterns of neighborhood development in Portland, Oregon that puts homes, businesses, and the other stations of American life in considerably closer proximity. America’s resurgent metropolitan regions David Goldberg, the communications director of Smart Growth America, agrees that America won’t be able to drill its way out of the energy crisis. “But we can build our way out of it,†he says. Indeed, …
When we first heard, last year, about the $10 billion investment that T. Boone Pickens (see pix above) is making in the Texas Panhandle to build the largest wind generating station in the United States our response was elemental. Right message. Right messenger. Right scale of investment to foster the clean energy, good jobs economy. Today in New York, Pickens made another thrust to prod America to take charge of its energy future. He launched …
One of the most noticeable features on Newton, Iowa’s Web site is a map of the Newton Union Cemetery. For a time over the last two years, the map seemed a fitting metaphor for the town of 16,000, which lies 35 miles east of Des Moines. After all, the Whirlpool Corporation in 2006 purchased, and a year later closed the Maytag Corporation’s offices and plants in Newton, putting 1,800 people out of work and ending …
Last November Senator Hillary Clinton delivered a major policy speech in Iowa, during which she described her clean energy and jobs proposal. Three months later, in a speech in Seattle, Senator Barack Obama outlined his clean energy plan. Every week now, in many of their public appearances, both Democratic presidential candidates mention the millions of “green-collar jobs” they anticipate from an energy strategy that stresses clean renewable sources and moves the nation away from a …
Last November Senator Hillary Clinton delivered a major policy speech in Iowa, during which she described her clean energy and jobs proposal. Three months later, in a speech in Seattle, Senator Barack Obama outlined his clean energy plan. Every week now, in many of their public appearances, both Democratic presidential candidates mention the millions of “green-collar jobs†they anticipate from an energy strategy that stresses clean renewable sources. Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, who’s …
In 1999 Alan Durning, the author and director of the Sightline Institute in Seattle, published a prescient and well-received book about natural resources and economics entitled “Green-Collar Jobs.†“A sustainable economy can generate employment just as well as an unsustainable one,†Durning wrote. “For every declining industry, like those that log old-growth forests, make farm chemicals, and build roads, there is an emerging one to take up the slack, like those that advise organic farmers, …
The University of Michigan Center for Sustainability Systems just posted this very good online interactive primer on how we use resources. This is a clear and concise check on our excessive use of resources, and a strong way to get kids engaged. It’s also a keen deployment of design and online interactivity. Nice work Michigan.  Â
SAN FRANCISCO — A couple of people I know out here in the Bay Area attended one of the San Francisco fundraisers more than a week ago, during which Barack Obama talked about white working class Americans in Pennsylvania and the Midwest who “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” The comment attracted no attention at all among the liberal, well-heeled Democratic donors gathered in the …
Nearly 13 years ago, in a first floor conference room of the Park Place Hotel in Traverse City, Marty Lagina and Frank Mortel sat side by side across a large wooden table, glowering at me through narrowed eyes. Lagina (with wife Olivia above) was the founder and chief executive of Terra Energy, an independent that had grown to become the most active driller and one of the largest producers of natural gas in Michigan. The …