Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Zane Selvans on Think Again: Drugs
- Bryan Keith on Think Again: Drugs
- Coal Finance for Climate Activists | Amateur Earthling on Boulder’s Energy Future Is Bright
- Hanna on Straight Talk on Climate Progress in California
- Coal Exports a Bigger Threat Than Tar Sands | Amateur Earthling on Obama Delays Keystone XL Pipeline
Linkstream
- PACE Lives!
The Federal Housing Finance Administration is taking public comments on Property Assessed Clean Energy financing programs, at the insistence of California's 9th Circuit court of appeals. Here's what I told them: Property Assessed Clean Energy financing programs, as have been initiated by many states and local governments, are a potentially transformative financing mechanism, enabling property owners to make good long term investments in energy efficiency and behind-the-meter renewable energy production. They address a market failure, in that buyers often do not appropriately integrate a property's energy costs into their price assessment. So long as the state and local PACE programs are - Climate Denial Instruction In Schools
Corporate interests are pushing a model bill in many states that would require schools to teach climate change denial. It sounds creepily reminiscent of the creationism/evolution mess from a few years ago. Except with the fossil fuel industry instead of the religious right behind it. Gah. - Vision Prize
Vision Prize is an expert poll on the nature of the climate risks we face, meant to demonstrate the degree of consensus (or the lack thereof) amongst those able to judge the evidence. It's put together by Carnegie Mellon University. Will be interesting to see what the results look like... - Open Climate Science Course
The University of Chicago has created an Open Courseware style Climate Science 101, with videos of the lectures and self-assessment materials online. It's aimed at non-science undergraduates. If you, or someone you know, want to get a little more in depth knowledge about climate science on their own time, it's a great resource. - Think Again: Drugs
A great roundup of the myths surrounding the Drug War, and the cogent arguments against continuing our ridiculous, harmful, and expensive policy of ideological prohibition.
- PACE Lives!
Twitterfeed
- Roughly 2/3 of all the humans who have ever reached the age of 65 are alive today. 1 week ago
- What I learned about coal industry finances this week: http://t.co/UN1lXxRm 3 weeks ago
- In a room full of suits at NYU law. Everyone here wants to end the Reign of Old King Coal. Strangulation by purse strings. 3 weeks ago
- More thoughts on the dangers of giving in to a defeatist climate apocalypse narrative: http://t.co/Bwq276vQ from @AlexSteffen 1 month ago
- Authorizing US military to indefinitely detain citizens w/o trial would be unconstitutional, right? http://t.co/cRKXkpfb #tellmeimdreaming 2 months ago
Incoming Memes
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Shared Links for May 29th
Post-Scarcity Prophet: Economist Paul Romer on growth, technological change, and an unlimited human future. – Reason Magazine – An excellent interview with Paul Romer from Stanford, who has apparently been thinking along the same lines as I have about the … Continue reading
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Tagged architecture, bicycle, capitalism, cities, copyright, corporations, design, economics, economy, google, green, growth, history, internet, interview, lessig, maps, non-linear, planning, policy, politics, science, socialism, sustainability, technology, transportation, wiki, wto
2 Comments
China and Continuum Privatization
We watched a Long Now talk last night, by Orville Schell (currently a fellow of the Asia Society in New York) entitled “China thinks long term, but can it re-learn how to act long term?“ His main point was that … Continue reading
Cradle to Cradle + Renewable Energy = Material Autarky
Somehow, in the course of watching this talk by Orville Schell on China and long term thinking, I was finally struck by the potential consequences of really doing Cradle to Cradle design, and scaling up renewable energy. It would mean … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged china, economics, energy, material, public, renewable, sustainability, trade
2 Comments
Shared Links for May 26th
The Story of Stuff – A 20 minute video on where "stuff" comes from, and where it goes, and a little bit on why, and how we might do it differently. Yeah, it's sustainability propaganda, but sometimes that's okay. (tagged: … Continue reading
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Tagged agriculture, architecture, cars, cities, climate, design, economics, energy, environment, europe, food, garden, green, passivhaus, policy, politics, recycling, russia, science, sustainability, system:filetype:pdf, system:media:document, transportation
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Michael Pollan on Deep Agriculture
I can’t believe how much I enjoy the Long Now talks. Thoughtful and intelligent people, usually talking about things I happen to think are important, and interesting. I almost feel like it’s a re-invention of the oratory form. I’m glad … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged agriculture, food, green, light, longnow, personal, policy, politics, public, reviews, sustainability, talks
2 Comments
Shared Links for May 24th
Math and the City – The same scaling laws seem to apply to both cities and organisms: infrastructure requirements per capita (or per unit body mass) go down as population (size) go up. Not so surprising, since both cities and … Continue reading
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Tagged africa, agriculture, art, bicycle, biology, china, cities, design, economics, food, gardening, infrastructure, nasa, policy, politics, space, sustainability, system:filetype:pdf, system:media:document, trade, transportation
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What Are Cities For?
Kurt recently asked me: Assuming (1) that you like the outdoors, open spaces, gardening, etc. and (2) that you would prefer high-density urban design to low-density, suburban, car-oriented sprawl, then how would you fuse these two together in an ideal … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged architecture, bicycle, cities, design, economics, history, personal, policy, public, sustainability, transportation
6 Comments
The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb
I finished reading Taleb’s second book, The Black Swan. He openly admits that it’s not really a new book, but a re-writing of his first book, Fooled by Randomness, which I loved. He’s gotten really incredibly lucky with the timing … Continue reading
Tagged books, economics, finance, non-linear, philosophy, probability, reviews, science
4 Comments
Shared Links for May 21st
Car-Free Housing in European Cities – A survey of sustainable residential development projects across Europe, including Vauban, outside Freiburg. The study is from 2000, so it's a little out of date, but an interesting overview anyway. It would be great … Continue reading
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Tagged architecture, bicycle, chile, cities, copyright, design, economics, environment, europe, green, internet, kayak, law, paddling, patagonia, policy, politics, religion, spanish, sustainability, technology, transportation, travel
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Genes are sentences and genomes books
It’s really a pleasure to talk to smart people who don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I think it forces you to come up with the best analogies and metaphors. The most essential explanations. It turned out that … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged biology, engineering, genetics, non-linear, personal, public, science
3 Comments