Global Climate | ModeShift

More On Taut Times For
Big Coal

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 18, 2008March 16, 20081

Â Sourcewatch today reports on the national campaign to end energy production from plants using coal as a fuel source. “Between 2000 and 2006, over 150 coal plant proposals were fielded by utilities in the United States. By the end of 2007, 10 of those proposed plants had been constructed, and an additional 25 plants were under construction,” said Sourcewatch.: In 2007, 59 coal-fired plants were cancelled, abandoned, or put on hold. The anti-coal forces …

A Driving Rain in Northern Michigan; Rings Around Southwest’s Deepening Drought

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 8, 2008January 8, 20080

The era of global climate change has produced such rainy and warm conditions in northern Michigan that a winter’s worth of snow and ice melted completely here over the last two days. Meanwhile it’s dry, desperately so, in several huge and significant regions of the country. The striking contrasts are putting strains on the culture and economy in ways we’re only starting to understand. Yesterday I stood in a driving January rain talking to Jim …

Taut Times For Big Coal

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 6, 2008January 7, 20080

The weight of history is a heavy burden. Just ask the developers of nuclear power, or the manufacturers of toxic farm chemicals, or the makers of cars that aren’t competitive in fuel economy or quality. These industrial sectors, and many more, were reshaped by cultural, political, and economic trends they neither anticipated nor were able to manage. Now that weight appears to be pressing hard on the American coal industry and the utilities that buy …

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 …

In Seattle, A Change of Heart on Harbor Highway

by Keith SchneiderDecember 13, 2007December 29, 20070

Cary Moon, the founder of the People’s Waterfront Coalition in Seattle, and one of the country’s premier advocates for alternatives to wasteful highways, wrote me this week about the progress she and her colleagues are making to replaced the elevated Alaskan Way Viaduct with a less expensive, neighborhood conserving, energy efficient alternative. “You might find this joint press release from the governor, the county, and the city interesting,” said Ms. Moon (see pix). “Quite a …

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 …

Flip: As Bali Climate Conference Begins, One Man Makes a Multi-Media Difference

by Keith SchneiderDecember 3, 2007December 3, 20070

How useful can imagination and multi-media imagery be in helping to explain the risks of global warming?Â Check out this remarkable interactive map produced by Architecture 2030, the non-profit founded by Ed Mazria, an architect based in New Mexico. Each of the red hot spots identifies a coastal community that would largely disappear in a torrent of tidal flooding caused by the melting ice caps. It’s among the most immediately visual scenarios of a potentialÂ national calamity …

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 …

More on Midwest Energy Schizophrenia

by Keith SchneiderNovember 18, 2007November 19, 20071

With as much Midwest fanfare as they daredÂ toÂ muster, nineÂ governors last week announced a regional compact to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. It was the third such multi-state climate change agreement.Â States in the Northeast and the far West have already ratifiedÂ similar pacts. Midwest governors also agreed on an economic development plan forÂ our increasingly wintry and troubled region that focused on promoting biofuels, wind energy, efficiency, conservation, and other measures to reduce costs and clear pollutants. Michigan …

Lake Superior and Climate Change

by Keith SchneiderNovember 1, 2007November 5, 20076

Â Last summer, the National Park Service issued a little-noticed bulletin with this tidbit. The northern Midwest, including the upper Great Lake region, has warmed by almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit in the 20th century. Data for Lake Michigan, Huron and Superior show that summer water temperatures are increasing. Lake Superior’s summer surface water temperatures have increased by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit since since 1980. This week top resource scientists gathered in Duluth to add a few …