At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
BENZONIA, MI — Just as the first flying flakes of snow in October signal the onset of winter here in my hometown, the emergence of the snow white petals of the forest-dwelling trillium are a strong forecast of summer’s welcome warmth. No more so than this year. It’s been an unusually cold and wet spring. The ice didn’t come off Crystal Lake until well into April this year. On April 19 and 20 it snowed …
WASHINGTON – The price of gasoline crested to more than $5 a gallon this weekend in Washington, D.C. Along with stressing the majority of Americans completely dependent on their cars, the price rise also will prompt a new level of political agitation and policy nuttiness in the nation’s energy sector. You’ll recall that the last time gasoline prices rose to such heights in 2008 America elected a black president and the financial sector collapsed. Expect …
Here in northern Michigan, we awoke jubilant this morning to the news of Bin Laden’s death, and not just because it closes a terrible narrative in our country’s history. It’s also personal in the most formidable way. The removal of Bin Laden from the global stage also means the dramatic weakening of U.S. justification for continuing the war in Afghanistan. And that, in turn, means that the chance that Cody Bates is deployed to that …
YINCHUAN, China—The morning we travel north from this provincial capital, following the Yellow River to the Nan Liang Migration Farm, Kou Guojiang greets our arrival with a smile and a farm-fresh breakfast. It is April 13, and the bright sun lights a long table set with big purple grapes, miniature oranges, thin slices of watermelon, cherry tomatoes, and crisp red apples so cold they perspire in the warming air. Kuo is the 46-year-old chairman of …
CHENGDU, China — Just as with food safety trends in the United States, one antidote to the growing incidence of serious contamination events in China is to raise more food without farm chemicals using organic production practices. On Tuesday this week I visited the Anlong Organic Farm about 40 miles west of Chengdu, in Sichuan Province, and one of China’s growing number of organic farms. The farm is six years old, and owned and managed …
Bob Dylan performed here on Friday night in a memorable concert that featured a number of famous songs including Tangled Up In Blue, Desolation Row, and Like a Rolling Stone. His raw voice grew sweeter as his vocal cords warmed, and in the latter stages he actually sounded alot like the younger Dylan we all know so well. Though China has surpassed the United States in clean energy development, transportation, urban investment, residential housing, auto …
SHANGHAI, China – Cascades of light, like shimmering waterfalls, tumble down the sides of spiral skyscrapers here in what a friend described as China’s blade runner city. Highways are elevated, lit underneath at night in blacklight blue. A maglev train, the first in the world, speeds at 250 miles per hour to the glass and steel expanse of the international airport, which gathers the train in the folds of its white wings. It’s easy as …
CHENGDU, China- Even in China, where power plants, coal mines, water-transport networks, and other big tools of industrialization are built at astonishing scale and with surprising speed, the hydropower dam construction program in Sichuan, Yunnan, Tibet, and other southwest provinces has no equal in China, or anywhere else for that matter. Israeli journalist Rachel Beitarie reports on China’s mammoth dam-building program for Circle of Blue, the sixth chapter in the Choke Point: China series that …
Residents of this beautiful and beleaguered state weren’t the only Americans electrified last night by Chrysler’s Superbowl ad starring Eminem and Detroit. My father-in-law and I watched the commercial at his home in Brethren, where he raises beef and pork on a 40-acre farm. He’s Manistee County born and raised. He also can fix anything that needs fixing and spent a good bit of his work life as a prison guard. I’m a New York-born …
Michigan and Ohio have emerged as important centers of solar energy manufacturing. Here’s my latest piece in the New York Times. Big question for the two states and the rest of the American clean energy industry: Will the November election snuff out recent advances? Many of the conservative lawmakers elected to state Legislatures, governors’ offices, and Congress campaigned aggressively against climate science and public incentives for renewable energy. — Keith Schneider