Mark Jacobson (Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford) and Mark Delucchi (Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis) have authored a new pair of papers on meeting the world’s energy needs through renewable energy. The two papers offer: – An accounting of renewable energy provision (largely with wind, water and solar) sufficient to meet to projected global…
Michael Tomasello: Why We Cooperate
From the new book, Why We Cooperate, by Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, Germany. [T]here are two clearly observable characteristics of human culture that mark it as qualitatively unique. … The first is what has been called cumulative cultural evolution. Human artifacts and behavioral practices often become…
Ostrom: Polycentricity and Climate Change
In a 2009 World Bank report, “A Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change,” political scientist Elinor Ostrom challenges the notion that a global atmosphere requires global action. Given the complexity and changing nature of the problems involved in coping with climate change, there are no “optimal” solutions. … The advantage of a polycentric approach…
Anthony Giddens: Climate Change Politics
British sociologist Anthony Giddens, author of The Politics of Climate Change, speaking February 2010 at The Institute of International and European Affairs. My main thesis is that: no matter what happens on an international level, it’s no good having agreements if you can’t implement them. … A lot of this has to be led at the national…
Collins and Evans: Expertise in the Age of Amateurs
Digital networks enable an age of amateurs. As barriers to participation, collaboration and self-organization fall, authority is fragmented. Here comes everybody. Yet specialized expertise remains essential. And in fields like, say, climate science, amateur commentators have stirred a potful of uncertainties – some valid, others not – into a stew of climate confusion. To me,…
Climate, Worldviews and Cultural Theory
To what extent do you agree with each of the following? • I am more strict than most people about what is right and wrong. • I prefer simple and unprocessed foods. • Making money is the main reason for hard work. • I feel that life is like a lottery. These statements come from…
Climate Change as a Perfect Moral Storm
In my view, climate change is a perfect moral storm. It brings together global and intergenerational challenges to our ability to behave ethically. The Global Storm I call the first challenge the global storm. The impacts of greenhouse gas emissions are not realized solely or even primarily at their source. Hence, there is a spatial…
The Story of the Trillion Tons of Carbon
Here is an axiom that bears repeating: Measure what matters. The classic case of faulty measurement remains Gross Domestic Product, whose counterproductive calculations were pilloried in a 1968 speech by Robert Kennedy and detailed in a 1996 essay, “If GDP is up, why is America down?” Yet even solid measures may offer narrow views. And…
Mike Hulme: Why We Disagree about Climate Change
Mike Hulme is founding director of the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia. This talk was recorded at The University of Nottingham’s Institute for Science and Society (mp3). Climate change is telling the story of an idea and how that idea is changing…
Thinking about “The Green Mind”
“Let’s start with the fact that climate change is anthropogenic,” says psychologist Elke Weber in “Why Isn’t the Brain Green?” an article by Jon Gertner in the annual Earth Day issue of the NYT Magazine, which this year focuses on “The Green Mind.” “That means it’s caused by human behavior,” Weber tells Gertner. “That’s not to say that…