ModeShift - Part 44

A Hydrocarbon Boom Unfolds While Northern Michigan Fears The Wind

by Keith SchneiderJune 25, 2011June 25, 20111

The history of renewable energy, at least the way many in the environmental community imagined it with the election of President Obama, is a straight story line. A courageous young leader, worried about economic and national security, takes on the big energy dogs and begins to shift the United States away from dirty, dangerous, and expensive fossil fuels. Then there is history the way it actually unfolds. Markets and personal values and incomes and public …

Demand for Energy Tests Water Supply and Economic Stability in China and the U.S.

by Keith SchneiderJune 22, 2011June 22, 20110

As you know, if you’re a regular reader of ModeShift, my interest for over a year has focused on energy demand and water supply in the United States and China. I study the trends and don’t see how advancing the fossil fuel agenda in both countries really helps provide long-term security. It just looks like we’re determined to make the energy industry richer and more influential,Â while we do our best as ordinary citizens to …

Garrison Keillor and Prairie Home Companion at Interlochen

by Keith SchneiderJune 19, 2011January 31, 20134

In 2004, as “Prairie Home Companion” neared its 30th anniversary, the New York Times said Garrison Keillor, the live Saturday night radio show’s host, was “stapled to something bigger than he is.” That’s about as apt a description of Keillor’s contribution as I’ve read. Last night, Keillor and all of the Prairie Home Companion crew broadcast the show from Kresge Auditorium at the Interlochen Center for theÂ Arts here in northwestern Michigan. It was a …

Job One In U.S. and China: Perpetuate The Fossil Fuel Economy

by Keith SchneiderJune 18, 2011June 18, 20110

Jay Letto, a friend who oversees the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, wrote to me last week asking for my ideas and participation on a panel in October that looks at U.S. and China clean energy and environmental technology development. Here’s my response: The last year of reporting on energy and environment issues globally has been just about as interesting and engaging as any I’ve done — the China experience in particular. …

Owensboro, Kentucky: What Works, What Doesn’t

by Keith SchneiderJune 15, 2011June 15, 20118

Twenty years ago, in a strikingly perceptive series of articles in the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson concluded that Kentucky’s third largest city had the proven capacity to set and achieve big community goals, but that its path to a stronger economy and better quality of life was impeded by related challenges – “some psychic, some civic, some economic and social.” This year the Public Life Foundation of Owensboro asked Peirce, Johnson and …

Jack Kevorkian Dies — Without Assist; The NYT Obit

by Keith SchneiderJune 5, 2011August 19, 20190

Jack Kevorkian met death on Friday without any assist. Three years ago I wrote his advance obituary for the New York Times, which published it on the front page on Saturday. Kevorkian was an odd and immodest man of scant talent who became a signpost of his time principally by being an untiring zealot. He lived alone. He had no other responsibilities other than himself. That made it possible for Kevorkian to focus such uncompromising …

Blue Green Alliance and Apollo Alliance To Merge

by Keith SchneiderMay 29, 2011June 5, 20112

Last week the Apollo Alliance and the BlueGreen Alliance,Â two of the most important national non-profits supporting clean energy development and good jobs, announced that as of July 1 they would merge. The much larger Minneapolis-based BlueGreen Alliance, a five-year-old collaboration of big green groups and unions, will become the parent of San Francisco-based Apollo, which was founded in 2003 and gained its renown for being the first organization to understand that the transition to …

Chinaâ€™s Other Looming Choke Point: Food Production

by Keith SchneiderMay 26, 2011May 27, 20112

More than two years ago in Circle of Blue’s The Biggest Dry, I was part of a Michigan-based multi-media reporting team that documented how hard Australia’s primary food-growing region was getting hammered by climate change. The Murray-Darling Basin of southeast Australia, named for the region defined by two of the nation’s longest rivers, was in the throes of a 12-year drought that was crippling grain production sectors, especially the $1 billion rice industry. I called …

Globalization Full Circle; Newest NYT Article

by Keith SchneiderMay 25, 2011May 25, 20111

TOLEDO, Oh. – My newest piece in the New York Times focuses on globalization that’s come full circle in a small Midwest city. Before it became known as the Marina District, the 128 acres of tall grass, and piled dirt on the Maumee River here was the place where the Acme coal-fired power plant once belched thick black smoke before it was decommissioned in 1994 andÂ became one of the city’s most prominent eyesores. Right …

At Last, Spring in Northern Michigan

by Keith SchneiderMay 21, 2011January 31, 20130

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 …