The Cloud’s Not Fluffy, It’s a Hot, Loud, Energy-Voracious Factory
A more detailed look at why to resist massive pressures for data center buildout and question claims of inevitability.
Read more...Category Archives: Environment
This Car-Free Neighborhood Was Designed to Revolutionize American Cities
A discussion with the founder of Culdesac, a real estate developer devoted to building walkable neighborhoods.
Read more...Coffee Break: Unstable Climate-Unstable Economy, Gambling and the Decline of Sport, the Last of the Great Men of Molecular Biology, and SNAP
Part the First: Financial Stability and Climate Instability. Or, could a climate-related shock trigger a recession? This is a question that could be asked only by an economist, or two, as in Advancing research on financial stability and climate-related financial risk, an editorial last week in Science: Climate change–related natural disasters such as floods, fires, […]
Read more...Tom Ferguson and Nick French: Red Tech’s Political Power, Its War on Labor and the Environment
An in-depth talk between political scientist Tom Ferguson and Jacobin’s Nick French about recent big shifts, above all the rise of red tech.
Read more...What the Air You Breathe May Be Doing to Your Brain
Why it behooves you to care about air quality, specifically PM2.5 pollution.
Read more...Book Excerpt: How Coyotes Found a New Homeland in the East
The explosion of populations east of the Mississippi was made possible by logging and the slaughter of wolves.
Read more...Bill Gates Wants to Set the Environmental Agenda Ahead of COP30: It’s Not Surprising
Bill Gates’s bid to reframe the environmental agenda suggests it’s often set top-down, serving a particular set of interests, in this case, AI
Read more...Mission Impossible: Why the US Cannot Reverse Its Manufacturing Decline
Debunking magical thinking about the US regaining its manufacturing mojo at scale.
Read more...Data, Power and Emissions: How AI’s Growth May Slow Down the Green Transition
AI’s power demands are producing heavier use of fossil fuels to generate electricity.
Read more...Coffee Break: Political Grownups, Bending Time, CDC at Sea, Snakebites, and AI Again
Part the First: Where Have All the Grownups Gone? Corey Robin is always worth reading (the first edition of The Reactionary Mind is much better than the second), and lately he has been more active publicly, here asking about the grownups: For a long time now, I’ve thought that you’re never really a grownup until […]
Read more...Revolt Against Data Centers Spreading Around the World
Data centers’ rapidly rising resource demands is fuelling rising internatiional opposition.
Read more...Look Out for These 8 Big Ag Greenwashing Terms at COP30
A look at some of the newest greenwashing phrases being road tested at COP30. The worst is many will go down easily.
Read more...FEMA Buyouts vs. Risky Real Estate: New Maps Reveal Post-flood Migration Patterns Across the US
Selling may be good for homeowners who can find buyers, but it doesn’t make the community more resilient.
Read more...How a Bush-Era ‘Green’ Solution Made Climate Change Worse
Journalist Michael Grunwald digs into uncomfortable truths about food and agriculture in his new book, ‘We Are Eating the Earth.’
Read more...The Rising Carbon Footprint of Electricity in the United States
On the policy of increasing electricity generation without decarbonization, as in increased reliance on gas.
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