energy

I was in Washington DC recently and will be there again soon. It's a wonderful city. There's much talk about the subjects I care about, excellent ethnic food, and people are remarkably friendly: everywhere I went I got into conversation with someone, even in the reception area at the Brookings Institute. But it is a city of air-conditioning. In the Berkshires, where I live, only stores and restaurants and new mansions have A/C. Why, I wonder, do people want to live in buildings colder in the summer than in the [...]

While I'm feeling guilty about air travel, I guess the oil companies are feeling twinges of guilt, too. At least that's what you would think, at the airport or reading the major financial papers. Chevron, Shell, and BP (British Petroleum) are all engaged in 'peak oil' PR, and it's simply amazing to see. Greenwashing, according to critics at Postcarbon.org, but it seems to me that if oil companies are splashing statistics across the walls of airports the situation is grave enough that lots of people can be persuaded that we [...]

I do a lot of traveling, more than ever before, and I'm increasingly conscious of the impact of our excessive mobility is. I'm not sure just what to do about it, but there are certainly a few days we can do immediately. First, we should wake up to the impact of trips by car and especially aeroplane, and we should not make them carelessly, or just because it's what everyone else does (fly to Florida in March). How many times have you heard people say, "I needed a vacation from [...]