Environmental advocates face a question that has widespread implications for how we think about legislation, lobbying, mass movements, and social change: what do you do when an issue emerges as one of the most urgent matters of our time and, at the same instant, becomes firmly regarded as a political loser?
Because of its magnitude, the climate crisis can appear as the sum total of all environmental problems. But halting greenhouse gas emissions is a specific problem, the most pressing subset of the larger apocalyptic panorama. A radical approach to the crisis of climate change begins not with a long-term vision of an alternate society but with an honest engagement with the very compressed timeframe that current climate science implies. In the age of climate change, these are the real parameters of politics.
Can an energy system move off carbon-based fuels and nuclear energy at the same time? Will Boisvert argues that the German Energiewende shows why not—with a response from Osha Gray Davidson and a reply by Boisvert.
This article is part of a debate on the German plan to eliminate nuclear energy. To read Will Boisvert’s initial article, >click here. To read Osha Gray Davidson’s response, click here. Thanks to Osha Gray Davidson for commenting. I’ll address …
This article is part of a debate on the German plan to eliminate nuclear energy. To read Will Boisvert’s initial article, click here. To read his reply to Osha Gray Davidson, click here. Germany’s renewable energy project should be critically …
How can we confront the challenge of climate change, especially when those hit first and hardest by climate change are poorer and more marginalized than those with the power to take large-scale action?
I can’t speak for the tens of thousands of people who were hurt very badly by Hurricane Sandy and who are still in need, several months later, of a government that is big, strong, effective, and genuinely committed to the …
Sometimes pictures tell the story best. Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change complied and published the results of several studies on renewable energy. The good news is that there is tremendous potential for the use of renewable forms …
