Max Gladwell

Big surprise: higher energy prices influence behavior and reduce consumption. When it comes to solving the climate and energy crises, it’s the economics…stupid.
Every once in a while, two stories converge in our RSS feeds that form a yin and yang and speak to a greater trend or issue. First, The Economist reports on “The elusive […]

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Ethanol is an easy scapegoat, especially when troubled times call for one, but it’s not the villain most make it out to be.

When a news source like Business Week articulates your position so accurately, there’s not much more to add. Corn ethanol is a bridge. The government subsidies and mandates are necessary to build it, […]

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The End of Suburbia, $200 Oil, Food Miles, Greenpeace Goes Nuclear, Global Cooling, The iPhone Social Network, Top 25 Blogs, That’s All for NAU, and GM Invests in Cellulosic Ethanol
1. It’s the End of Suburbia as You Know it
Business Week: The suburban landscape has been marred by foreclosures and half-built communities abandoned in the subprime […]

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We’re sensing a very positive trend: smart, connected, powerful people are calling for solutions
From Fortune:
As president of Google, Larry Page has pushed his people to take risks that have led to hot new applications like Gmail and Google Maps. Lately he has been thinking far outside the walls of his company. Page sees a world […]

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It’s a solution to global warming, dependence on fossil fuels, air pollution, urban congestion, parking, and obesity. That’s what we call a mega solution.

From YouTube:
The concept vehicle in the animation is a human-electric hybrid. You power the generator and the electric motor drives the vehicle. You can also drive it as an electric vehicle if […]

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Stephen Colbert and “The Colbert Report” take on the ethanol debate

Never Was So Little Asked Of So Many By So Few

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Rather than expanding current wind and solar power sources, energy experts indicate it is more effective to eliminate and restructure current consumption methods. Jim Sweeny, an energy economist from Stanford University, says “freeing up 10 percent of current demand would leave more energy available than expanding all current wind and solar production tenfold.”

Echelon, an alternative […]

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From Fast Company: Oakland activist Van Jones is on a mission to bring green-collar jobs to the urban poor. His mightiest weapon: his mouth.

This story has many inspiring elements: community building, youth empowerment, market-driven solutions, and solutions to poverty, employment and global warming. Most of us don’t worry about the next meal or […]

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The hope is that second-generation biofuels, such as those produced from algae, will present a cost-effective and sustainable source of liquid-fuel energy and a solution to our dependence on fossil fuels. There is also great potential for algae to be used for carbon sequestration, wherein you’d locate algae production next to fossil-fuel energy plants, such […]

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The (corn) ethanol debate is firing on all cylinders as we scan stories on Digg. Let us know if you detect a theme. Indeed, it’s tough to find anyone besides politicians and corn-ethanol producers who are for it these days. Our opinion has varied, though we’ve always been bullish on the cellulosic variety and any […]

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