The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffI thought I knew William Kamkwamba’s story. I was in the audience at the TED Global conference in Arusha, Tanzania when William took the stage to introduce himself and the remarkable windmill he’d built at his ...
The Lessons of Katrina: Global Warming Adaptation is a Cruel Euphemism and Prevention is Far, Far Cheaper
Monday, August 31st, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffI’m updating this post from August 29, 2007, along with pieces of the adaptation trap — Part 1 and Part 2 from March 2008. The L.A. Times has brought to prominence (and fallen for) what I call ...
A Bright Green Argument for Geoengineering
Sunday, June 14th, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffJamais wrote an excellent opinion piece in the WSJ arguing for geoengineering research and experimentation. While I disagree with his conclusion and find geoengineering a poor strategy for getting us out the the troubles we're in, his ...
A Bright Green Argument for Geoengineering
Sunday, June 14th, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffJamais wrote an excellent opinion piece in the WSJ arguing for geoengineering research and experimentation. While I disagree with his conclusion and find geoengineering a poor strategy for getting us out the the troubles we're in, his ...
Earth 2100, Tonight
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffSo a ways back I was interviewed pretty extensively by ABC in preparation for their special "television event" Earth 2100. It airs tonight: It's an idea that most of us would rather not face -- that within ...
Earth 2100, Tonight
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffSo a ways back I was interviewed pretty extensively by ABC in preparation for their special "television event" Earth 2100. It airs tonight: It's an idea that most of us would rather not face -- that within ...
Scanning The Foothills Of The Future
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffBy Jemima Jewell "A fantastic tool for people to lift their eyes from the daily doom and gloom, to the foothills of the future – where the view is breathtaking." That’s how our recent vision for the West ...
“The Rocketship Wonder of Earlier Decades is Gone”
Sunday, May 31st, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffA great round-up of the talks at worldchanging ally and writer Geoff Manaugh's London conference, Thrilling Wonder Stories. Here are some interesting tidbits (all quotes are paraphrases): Peter Cook: "He stood up to talk about “Weird Shit ...
The Worldchanging Star Trek Challenge
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffClassic space operas ignore the difficult realities of space travel, assuming that all the potential kinks have been worked out through and that future societies have developed new "black box" technologies (as in wormholes and their ...
Where There Is No Vision, The People Perish 2
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffIn this sequel to Part 1, Bill Becker lays out some key goals and principles for a sustainable future. We are on the edge of a carbon revolution. Everything is going to change. This will matter to ...
Plan To Produce Clean Power And Water In Sahara Desert
Thursday, April 9th, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffBy Chris Alden Solar power and seawater to produce energy, food and water in Sahara Desert Mention the words “Sahara Forest” to anyone over the age of 20, and they’ll soon recall the old joke about the ...
Plan To Produce Clean Power And Water In Sahara Desert
Thursday, April 9th, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffBy Chris Alden Solar power and seawater to produce energy, food and water in Sahara Desert Mention the words “Sahara Forest” to anyone over the age of 20, and they’ll soon recall the old joke about the ...
A Green Future Where You Can Borrow Cars And Drink Rainwater
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffBy Alok Jha A low-carbon economy will be the culmination of thousands of decisions by governments, businesses and individuals about how we choose to balance environment and economy. There isn't one correct future but many, with each ...
A Green Future Where You Can Borrow Cars And Drink Rainwater
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffBy Alok Jha A low-carbon economy will be the culmination of thousands of decisions by governments, businesses and individuals about how we choose to balance environment and economy. There isn't one correct future but many, with each ...
Collapse Forward
Friday, March 27th, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffIt's reasonable to worry about collapse these days. From resource peaks to food scarcity, financial meltdowns to climate change, the news seems uniformly ominous. We certainly could blow it badly enough to trigger irrecoverable collapse (for instance, ...
Fifth Scenario Thinking
Monday, March 23rd, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffHeard this nice buzzphrase: "fifth scenario planning." In much conventional scenario planning, two essential questions are turned into axes on a graph, creating four sectors, each of which becomes a world or scenario. By finding strategies which ...
Ponzi 2: What Year Will Coastal Property Values Crash?
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffCoastal property values won't wait to (permanently) fall until sea levels have actually risen 4 or 5 feet, as they almost certainly will by the end this century on our current CO2 emissions path (see Startling ...
Bill Clinton: We Must Embrace Clean Energy or We Will “End Vast Prospects of Civilization for Our Grandchildren”
Monday, February 23rd, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffI am here liveblogging the clean energy and green grid summit sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund — see Watch Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Steven Chu, John Podesta on how to build a ...
Ice Age Bay Area and the Longer View
Monday, February 9th, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffKnowing your history gives you a tool for understanding change, especially big planetary and ecosystem changes. The San Francisco Bay Area is my home town, but I have to admit that I had only the fuzziest ...
βoyfriend (Part 1)
Friday, January 23rd, 2009 Posted in Green News, Imagining the Future | Comments OffThis is the first part of an original piece of science fiction written exclusively for Worldchanging by author Madeline Ashby. The story imagines a series of futuristic technologies, and explores ways their application might impact society ...