At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
Since the day back in 1981, when Inquiry Magazine dispatched me to the mountains of Cherokee County to find out why a popular defoliant was causing so much trouble in the forests and small towns of western North Carolina, I’ve been an environmental reporter. Today, Circle of Blue, where I serve as a senior editor and producer, posted “Reign of Sand,” an online multi-media report on the transition from grass to dust that is occurring …
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 …
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 …
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 …
 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 to Lake Superior, where evaporation, much lighter winter snows and unusually dry spring and summer seasons had produced miles of shoreline nobody had ever …
With as much Midwest fanfare as they dared to muster, nine governors last week announced a regional compact to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. It was the third such multi-state climate change agreement. States in the Northeast and the far West have already ratified similar pacts. Midwest governors also agreed on an economic development plan for 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 …
 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 …
 On October 4 Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson, who also happens to be the governor of New Mexico, essentially committed a personal political drowning here in the Great Lakes region. Mr. Richardson, who is campaigning hard to win the Nevada’s presidential caucus on January 9, the nation’s second such contest, told the Las Vegas Sun the following: “I want a national water policy,” he is quoted as telling the newspaper. “We need a dialogue between states …
 NEW YORK — The X Prize Foundation, which developed a new philanthropic idea called “revolution through competition,” told participants today at the Clinton Global Initiative that it would commit $300 milion in the next seven years to help solve global crises in each of the four CGI focus areas. The foundation said it is developing new prizes to increase access to renewable fuels, improve energy efficiency, and promote use of cleaner fuels. It also will have …
 This entry in Mode Shift’s Flip category, which spotlights great online applications of multi-media technology, introduces a brand new mapping tool to help local government officials, utilities, and entrepreneurs identify suitable places to build commercial-scale wind turbines in Michigan. Developed by the Land Policy Institute at Michigan State University, and dubbed the Michigan Prospecting Tool by its developers, Charles McKeown and Benjamin Calnin, the online tool provides users an easy and elegant way to find the windiest places in …