New Yorker Climate Issue – Just for the Record

Posted on December 21, 2022 by Bill Hewitt

The New Yorker had a characteristically superb compendium of stories last month about the climate crisis. The best one was “Climate Change from A to Z” by Betsy Kolbert. She relates important facts about climate change, going through the entire alphabet: A for Arrhenius (who scoped the physics of global warming in the late 19th Century) to Z for Zero (in which she recounts how the “Colorado River basin has been called ‘ground zero for climate change in the United States.'”

She touches on the promise of clean tech but neglects one of the key burgeoning areas that is going to help us mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis, namely hydrogen. I wrote a letter to the magazine and, just for the record, I want to share it here. Continue reading →

One Giant Leap Toward A Newer World

Posted on August 17, 2022 by Bill Hewitt

The premise of my book from way back when (2012) was that, stipulating that we were then (and are now) in a climate crisis, there were nevertheless heroic efforts underway to bring us back to some degree of climate health. I wrote then: “Some of my students and others have asked me over the last several years if we are addressing the climate crisis in time and with sufficient force and focus to avoid a planetary catastrophe. I tell them I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that we are forging new tools for much more sustainable, much cleaner and smarter ways to live. We have been realizing progress in areas like renewable energy that even ten years ago people in the field would have told you was not possible by now. We have a long way to go, but what we are seeing happen is incontrovertible evidence that there is a path to sustainability, that we can, in the words of the environmental prophet Barry Commoner, make peace with the planet.” Continue reading →

Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid

Posted on May 15, 2022 by Bill Hewitt

I have always said that I’m an environmentalist but not a naturalist. I’m an environmentalist largely because I had so much pleasure outdoors as a kid: camp on the ever-magnificent Lake George in New York, climbing and hiking in the Adirondacks, skiing in the Green Mountains, traveling around the American West one memorable summer, playing ball in the fall and spring. I was blessed that way. My wife and daughter have imbibed much of that love of the great outdoors. I have never gained, however, a great deal of a grasp of the inner workings of the natural world. Birders are all around me in Central Park during migration, but I can’t tell a hawk from a handsaw. The wonders of nature nevertheless never cease to astonish me. An article from last year absolutely mystified me with this fact: A species of beetle in South Africa, feeding on animal dung, like others of their cousins which are found on all the continents except Antarctica, roll their dung balls in a straight line at night by orienting with the Milky Way. Astonishing. The flash of color from a male Red-winged Blackbird once captivated me so thoroughly hitchhiking at dusk in Wisconsin that I realized it was my totem animal. When I watch trees waving in the wind, it seems to me that they are dancing in joy at the sunlight and air. Continue reading →

Water in the American West – Demand-Side Management

Posted on November 18, 2021 by Bill Hewitt

I wrote about Cadillac Desert, the classic book about water in the American West, in September. Scores of millions of people depend on the waterworks that were built up over the 20^th Century there, and many millions more benefit from the bounty of fruits and vegetables that grow there, much of it in California, where agriculture accounts for 80% of overall use. The story of Cadillac Desert, though, is that there has been a tremendous price paid for all that concrete, steel, energy, and the treasure needed to build and operate the waterworks. Environmental destruction has been catastrophic, lives were lost when dams broke, thousands of small farmers and their communities were destituted because the water too often benefited Big Ag, and the American taxpayer was bilked out of billions over time. Continue reading →

Ocean Impacts – IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Bill Hewitt

The first part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) has been out for a couple of weeks. Looking at the physical science, AR5 covers the full range of how greenhouse gases are changing the face of our planet.

One area that is getting more attention this time around is the ocean. As you can see here, for instance, as carbon Continue reading →

“Stop KXL” in New York (and The New Yorker)

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Bill Hewitt

Last week, there was a rally and March in New York City to send yet-another message to President Obama that the Keystone XL pipeline is a bad idea for the U.S. and for the planet. This picture juxtaposes two things of which we need more: loud and focused activism on climate change and superb green buildings like the Bank of America Tower. I’ve written here a few times about the KXL project. I’ve also had the privilege of interviewing one of the architects of the BofA Tower, Bob Fox, for my book. This building is also known as One Bryant Park and is one of the most advanced green buildings of its size in the world.

The salience of the opposition to the Keystone XL project is growing. One more indication is Elizabeth Kolbert’s eloquent essay in this week’s New Yorker: Lines in the Sand.

Continue reading →

“Publishers Weekly” + Endorsements

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Bill Hewitt

Well, the first review is in: The venerable Publishers Weekly, reaching thousands of publishers, librarians, writers, folks in print, film and other media, as well as agents, has given a thumbs up. The review notes that the book “…takes a broad look at efforts to combat the effects of climate change and finds much that is encouraging.” Later, it characterizes the book as “…a helpful synopsis of the world’s efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.”

I might add that the book has garnered two early endorsements of which I’m especially proud. Continue reading →

McKibben’s Manifesto

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Bill Hewitt

I mentioned Bill McKibben’s recent blockbuster article at Rolling Stone in passing the other day. If you didn’t know about the reality of the climate crisis before reading the article, you do now. This article may well have the impact that Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from A Catastrophe had a few years back. If you were only “concerned” or “cautious” – in the parlance of Yale’s ongoing “Six Americas” study – you’re going to be moved into the “alarmed” category. Continue reading →

A Newer World

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

Tag Archives: Elizabeth Kolbert