Time to Wake Up

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Bill Hewitt

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is shown here having fun with some of his colleagues prior to launching what we used to call a teach-in. They spent 15 hours last night into this morning highlighting the manifest dangers of climate change. Whitehouse has been a vocal leader on the issue, delivering a series of floor speeches as part of his “Time to Wake Up” campaign. He is part of a wholly reinvigorated effort in the US Senate to move the climate agenda. Climate Progress has essential messages from most of the more than 30 Senators who took part. One new Senator, Ed Markey, is well known for coauthoring the Waxman-Markey bill which passed the House in 2009, but died in the Senate. Reuters quotes Markey last night: “We hope that by staying up all night … we will signal a new dawn of climate change action in Congress.” Continue reading →

Climate Change = Weapon of Mass Destruction

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Bill Hewitt

John Kerry is a climate hawk. I’ve been a fan since before 2004 when I helped out on his presidential campaign. (Heavy sigh.) Now that he’s the US Secretary of State, he’s in a unique, critical position to be able to significantly advance an agenda of moving us off the path of self-destruction we’ve been on and onto one in which everyone can enjoy abundant energy and clean air and clean water, not to mention a climate system that will be able to heal itself over time. Continue reading →

O Brave New World

Posted on February 15, 2014 by Bill Hewitt

This is an eye-catching graphic, wouldn’t you say? It’s for a talk that Amory Lovins gave at Yale exactly two years ago. (See also the companion interview from the superb online journal Yale Environment 360.)

I use Reinventing Fire from Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute as a textbook for my graduate and continuing ed classes on clean tech. There is no more comprehensive, Continue reading →

Ivanpah

Posted on February 13, 2014 by Bill Hewitt

Joe Romm had an article about concentrating solar power (CSP) going back six years now called “The technology that will save humanity.” He gave a great overview, including a history and an eminently lucid rationale for its deployment. About five years ago I was driving west of Seville and was knocked out by the sight of the CSP plant that Abengoa has built there. Continue reading →

The EU Takes the Next Step

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Bill Hewitt

The Europeans are on the move. Building on the successes of their existing “20/20/20” plan, they are moving onward and upward. The old plan called for a 20% reduction of greenhouse gases economy-wide in the EU from 1990 levels by the year 2020. They are far advanced on this track. According to the EU here: “While EU GDP grew by 45% between 1990 and 2011, total greenhouse gas emissions from today’s 28 Member States – including emissions from international aviation, which are covered by the EU’s unilateral commitment – were 16.9% below the 1990 level in 2011 and an estimated 18% below 1990 in 2012. Member states’ latest projections show that total emissions in 2020, including international aviation, will be 21% below the 1990 level.” Continue reading →

Shout Out For Solar

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Bill Hewitt

The Solar Energy Industries Association is calling for us to “Shout out for Solar” today. Why in the world not?! It’s a brilliant technology, saving people money all over the world, providing power and jobs, and saving the planet. What’s not to love?

Polar Vortex

Posted on January 9, 2014 by Bill Hewitt

What is the Polar Vortex?

According to NOAA: “Colder temperatures to the north and warmer temperatures to the south create winds that generally blow from west to east around the northern hemisphere. This atmospheric river of strong winds can vary from a straight west-to-east pattern, to a more wavy pattern. Continue reading →

The Energy Gang

Posted on January 9, 2014 by Bill Hewitt

I mentioned Jigar Shah yesterday. He’s also one of Greentech Media’s “Energy Gang.” The weekly podcast has a quite sprightly and informative discussion between Shah, energy policy expert Katherine Hamilton and Greentech Editor Stephen Lacey. (Before moving over to GTM, Lacey was at Climate Progress.) This is what you call the A Team. Continue reading →

Smart Cities

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Bill Hewitt

This is going to be a great conference. It’s being sponsored by NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, where I teach. The keynote will be from Jigar Shah, a major actor in global clean tech today. See the full agenda here and sign up soon.

Kerry Pushing Forward

Posted on January 5, 2014 by Bill Hewitt

First of all, I want to quickly acknowledge the fact that I’ve been off the air for weeks. Put it down, if you will, to the end of semester for my graduate class, the holidays, some other work that needed to get done, but mostly to a sort of mini-sabbatical that I took for myself.

So, to the point: There was a great article the other day in the NY Times from Coral Davenport, the climate change beat reporter who came on in December: Kerry Quietly Makes Priority of Climate Pact. (Davenport is a vast improvement from John Broder, her predecessor, who took the opportunity often, it seemed to me, to take a hatchet to the administration’s efforts on climate and energy, and who had, at best, a cynical attitude to clean tech and policy advances.) Continue reading →

A Newer World

on the policy, politics, science and economics of environmental protection, sustainability, energy and climate change

Author Archives: Bill Hewitt