At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — When Bob O’Connor (far right above) was 18, he lived directly above me in a second-floor dorm room in Barclay Hall at Haverford College. He’s a big-boned guy with a quiet way, a sizable intellect, and likes to have fun. Two upper classmen, Pete Doan and Evan Lippincott, lived across the hall from my first-floor room. Pete and Evan were dorm reps and were supposed to keep tabs on freshmen like me …
Making the complex simpler to understand is one of the guiding missions of my life as a journalist. In the last several years, in reporting from Australia, Europe, Asia, and North America, I’ve devoted much of my time to reporting on global energy issues, particularly the coal production and clean energy surge in China; the gas and oil boom in North America, and the promising rise and troubled fall of clean energy prospects in the …
The New York Times is catching up to the grassroots opposition to big energy projects, clean energy or dirty. Today the paper reported on the developing push back to big oil pipelines, big electrical transmission lines, and other energy transport projects of scale. The dimensions of what needs to be done to push the country from high-carbon energy production to lower carbon production is as vast as anything the nation has attempted. That’s why it’s …
I’ve been writing for the New York Times since February 1981, covering all manner of people and places and events. Most recently, much of that work has focused on interesting real estate developments around the country. The latest article, featuring the University of Wisconsin’s work to construct a new entrance corridor on the east side of campus, was posted and published today: MADISON, Wis. — A century after it was first proposed, a broad pedestrian …
Prompted by President Obama’s unexpectedly cheery assessment of America’s energy outlook in the State of the Union, the Washington Post asked whether the surge in fossil fuel production was real. Yes, the paper concluded, but not for very long. The Post, it appears to me, is too pessimistic. U.S. oil production peaked in 1970s at about 9.6 million barrels per day. It dropped to 4.96 million barrels a day in 2008, the lowest production since …
Converging trends are roiling the clean energy manufacturing and production sectors here in Michigan and nationally. President Obama knows it and is worried. The collapse of the Solyndra solar plant in California is a prickly presidential campaign issue. Jobs and the country’s capacity to reduce its climate changing emissions, (as shown in the emissions counter above in NYC), also are big outcomes. On Tuesday evening, the president told the story of an unemployed west Michigan …
Four years ago, when he campaigned for the office he now holds, Barack Obama described the urgent need to pursue clean energy development because of a grave and persistent problem. Demand and prices for oil were rising, along with national and economic security risks tied to ever higher imports. Supplies of domestically-produced fuel, meanwhile, were falling. Last night, as the president defined the basic outlines of an “all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source …
Every month the Energy Information Administration, a unit of the Energy Department, updates its Total Energy report, one of the most useful compendiums of data describing the interest and capacity of the American energy sector. The latest edition, published last month, illustrates a national oil and gas sector on a roll. Among the rich field of data charts contained in Total Energy, two are arguably the most revealing. Table 5.1 (page 77) reports that the …
Early this morning Scott Terrell boarded Amtrak’s Empire Builder in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho for the overnight ride east to Williston, N.D. A month ago I met Scott while riding the same train to the heart of the northern Great Plains oil and gas boom. In the weeks since, I’ve learned more about the influence of energy development in the Dakotas and other states, and how it affects men like Terrell. Let’s just put it this …
Joel Bleth, a lawyer and engineer who co-founded Solar Bee, a very successful Dickinson, N.D.-based manufacturer of solar-powered equipment to circulate wastewater at treatment plants, sent a message here today asking how long the oil and gas boom in his state would persist. Dickinson, a prairie city of 18,000, has grown more than 10 percent since the turn of the century and for several years has experienced swelling markets for retail and office buildings, hotels …