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A Journalist Turned Environmental Activist in China

by Keith SchneiderDecember 16, 2007December 17, 20070

My new MacBook has a video camera and communications features (okay, don’t laugh all you Apple freaks) that enables me to dial up sources on Skype and also see who I’m talking to on my screen. On Friday morning I used these tools to interview John D. Liu, an American-born videographer, soil scientist, and founder of the Environmental Education Media Project for China, a 10-year-old environmental organization based in Beijing. My questions concerned the growing …

Was Jim Kunstler Right About “The Long Emergency”?

by Keith SchneiderDecember 6, 2007June 18, 20143

Â In 2005, when Jim Kunstler published “The Long Emergency,” Â an unsettling synthesis ofÂ major market trends (peak oil),Â environmental conditions (global warming, water scarcity, disease),Â and what he called the other “converging castastrophes of the 21st century,” IÂ was among the skeptics who was convinced that Kunstler’s analysis was uncharacteristically hyperbolic. Nearly two years later the shine on my bubble of optimism has dulled a bit.Â Essentially, Kunstler predicted that soaring oil prices would generateÂ enormous economic, political, andÂ cultural …

Lake Michigan Nears Lowest Level Ever Recorded

by Keith SchneiderNovember 29, 2007January 31, 20131

Â Tom Kelly, who directs the Inland Seas Education Association in Suttons Bay and is among the state’s foremost authorities on the Great Lakes, showed me a number of very interesting graphs earlier this week about the falling water levels in the Great Lakes. Much of the nation’s attention this summer was directed toÂ Lake Superior, where evaporation, much lighter winter snows and unusually dry spring and summer seasons hadÂ produced miles of shoreline nobody had ever …