Archive for January, 2009
Solar Vs. Atomic – 1953
A persistent lesson in green tech history is that, since the advent on the nuclear physics, solar and atomic power advocates have spent a lot of time and resources opposing each other. The atomic power industry clearly had some deeper pockets and won out most of the time. Case-in-point is this article from Popular Mechanics, [...]
The Naturmensch, America’s Maladapted Urbanite
Every day, I walk through Buena Vista Gardens on my way to Wired. It’s a park, a public space, but most of the young people and almost all of the Americans use it as a cut-through road, to make the long block between 4th and 3rd a little shorter. As you wend through the park, [...]
Distributing Food on the Multiuse Roads of 1903 New York
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzZF2PvQXlw]
Here’s a look at a food distribution system from 1903, as filmed by Thomas Edison. This market is thought to have been on New York’s lower east side, where more than 1,500 pushcart vendors plied their wares to a largely Jewish community.
“The precise location is difficult to ascertain, but it is certainly on the [...]
Chinese Power Generation Growth 2002-2008
The non-2008 growth rates are why people like Michael Shellenberger tell a certain tech magazine things like, “”If China burns all the coal that it is set to burn between now and 2050, we are super-deeply fucked.” The 2008 growth rate is why people like the environmental economist, Alan Randall, say things like, [...]
Our Plundered Planet and Ecoapocaltyptophilia
Fairfield Osborn’s Our Plundered Planet is a scathing critique of humans relationship with Nature written in 1947. It strikes me as remarkably in-tune with early-21st century ecoapocalyptophilia.
Osborn beat the rest of us to talking about the world’s new human-centered geological era by a good four decades. The third chapter of his book is titled, “The [...]
Old Solar Architecture
If you are one of the rare early adopters of green tech history, you owe it to yourself to check out George Mokray’s Old Solar series of posts at his blog at Daily Kos.
I particularly liked his post on Edward Sylvester Morse’s solar air heater, patented in 1881.
“A simple glazed box on the south wall [...]
World Oil Price Chronology – 1970-2007
Want to find interesting green tech innovations? Just look for periods with high positive acceleration.
Source: Energy Information Administration
An American Green Tech History Bibliography
Perhaps the best thing about writing a book about history is how much time you get to spend with your nose buried in old, weird books, reading and smelling them. Through Amazon, Powell’s, and Bolerium Books, I realized that I’d started to amass a nice collection of resources that you might want to take see.
So, [...]
American Green Tech History Map and Timeline
You’ll soon be able to cruise around a map of green tech history in America and scroll through a timeline of the major events in the history of the industry.
Right now, I’m working on building an American Green Technology Historical Registry that will mark out the places that have been important for wind, solar, hydrokinetic, [...]
Inventing Green by Alexis Madrigal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
