• Quality of Life

    I want to tackle the idea that our quality of life will suffer from measures intended to mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions. Let’s consider the COP27 summit in Egypt, and how interested parties are flooding towards the summit in jets, and are likely to enjoy the scuba diving, great weather, and general opulence of a…

  • Education and Sustainability

    For nearly all of my professional life I’ve been a teacher. Over the last decade I worked very hard to open my students’ eyes to social and environmental responsibility, but often the limits of time, curriculum, class size, and the rigid expectations of the district undermined any efforts I could make. That is, ultimately, why…

  • Individual vs. Corporate Responsibility

    Most climate change advocates will speak frequently about a shared sacrifice. In the effort our energy systems those who can adapt and be flexible with energy consumption stand to be least harmed. Let’s focus, for a minute, on the individual choices we make. We can, for the moment, ignore the oil and gas industry, which…

  • The Tone of the Transition

    I was driving down a country road in Ireland with my parents. We were in a car of European make, on what we termed the “wrong side” of the road. The road was narrow, with stubby stone walls hugging the asphalt. As the navigator, I was struggling to keep up with our journey. My cell…

  • Rare Metals Conundrum

    Cars. They can convey status. They can be political statements. And of course cars are required in most of America for us to get our groceries, run errands, get our kids to school. Many of us would like to invest in public transportation, micro-mobility, and other car-less solutions, but the fact of the matter is…

  • The Road

    Cormac McCarthy’s The Road follows a father and his son as they scrounge for survival in a post apocalyptic landscape. Devoid of animal life, sunlight, warmth, and living plants, the aftermath of our Earth is as menacing as the bands of marauding cannibals that hunt the protagonists . Their search for food is limited completely…

  • Jevons Paradox

    I had never head of Jevons paradox until I heard an Odd Lots podcast (through Bloomberg) on the energy transition. Jevons paradox is a cause and effect theory that generally states that increases in efficiency are offset by increased adoption or use He famously applied it to coal (in 1865), noting that the marvelously efficient…

  • Bend Change in Your Direction

    Climate change is very real and urgent. Changes in our infrastructure, policy, and energy production need to be made quickly, and I know our society will make them. But changes are hard, and so as an analogy I present to you my own career. I left a place of comfort and security, having taught Science…