Read & Watch

By Mark Neely Back in 2009, Stanford engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson and transportation scientist Mark Delucchi, of the University of California at Davis, laid out “A Plan for a Sustainable Future” in Scientific American. It would get the world to an all wind-water-solar economy by 2030. Later the deadline was moved back to 2050, but what stuck was not so much the details of the engineering plan as the casual estimate of the degree of national effort required. “Society has achieved massive transformations before,”… Read More »Opinion: Bipartisanship needed in the ‘war’ on climate change

By Dick Jones In January the Pentagon issued an ominous report to Congress on how climate change impacts the armed forces and national security. Two-thirds of 79 “mission-essential” military installations are vulnerable to flooding. Half are exposed to wildfires and mudslides. “The effects of a changing climate are a national security issue with potential impacts to DOD missions, operational plans and installations,” said Defense Department spokesperson Heather Babb in a Bloomberg News story about the report. Recent storm damage to Air Force bases Tyndall in… Read More »Centre Climate: How is national security affected by climate change?

By Dick Jones Our public discourse encourages us to believe that we live in a world of stark binary choices. Red state-blue state, liberal-conservative, capitalist-socialist. Nuance is so 20th century. That’s the case with the attention given to the Green New Deal, the plan championed by New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts senator Ed Markey. While its centerpiece is a stimulus program with incentives to move the United States to 100% renewable energy by 2030, the Green New Deal also contains an “economic bill of rights”… Read More »Climate watch: It’s not the Green New Deal or nothing at all

By Dick Jones This Earth Day, lawmakers should support an end to ‘socialized soot’ When former South Carolina Republican Congressman Bob Inglis was in State College in February to speak at Penn State’s “Sustainability Showcase,” he called for an end to “socialized soot.” The fossil-fuel industry gets a free pass on the health, environmental and national defense costs of its products. While profits are safely privatized, many of the industry’s costs are socialized — borne by society at large. Inglis, who for 12 years represented… Read More »Earth Day Op Ed