I’ve been working on environmental issues for decades: activist with the Sierra Club, working for NYSDEC in New York City, teaching at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, and writing all along the way. I like to think I’ve been reasonably effective over time. Continue reading
Don’t you love acronyms? ZEV MOU means “zero-emission vehicles memorandum of understanding.” The eight states of California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont today signed an agreement to develop an action plan to collectively require 15% of all new vehicles sold in their states be either electric or hydrogen fuel-cell by 2025. That should translate, as the rule phases in, to having 3.3 million ZEVs on their roads by that time. California Governor Jerry Brown said: “This is not just an agreement, but a serious and profoundly important commitment. From coast to coast, we’re charging ahead to get millions of the world’s cleanest vehicles on our roads.” Continue reading
It seems more and more evident every day, with storms like Sandy upon us, that business as usual is no longer an option. It’s certain that we have to accelerate our efforts to mitigate the greenhouse gases that are exacerbating, day by day, global climate change. But we also have to adapt. The sad reality is that we are seeing the unmistakable signs of a warming world and that the impacts of climate change are here to stay, probably for a hundred years or more. As no less a personage than the New Yorker’s David Remnick writes this week, we can have No More Magical Thinking. Continue reading