What History Can Bring to (Green) Technology

Green technology is changing so rapidly, one can hardly keep up with all the new solar and wind projects planned across the world. So, what can history bring to the study of such a fast-moving, innovative field?

Boarded Up Buckydome Outside Las Vegas

From Buckminster Fuller’s lecture notes:
Let’s assume there are hundreds of rnillions of planets.
Then what?
Therefore we should what?
Let’s make a simple comparison or analogy.
The maple tree has many seeds and each has a small chance of survival. Yet there are lots of maple trees around.
The percentage of each chemical element in the universe diminishes with higher [...]

The Ghost Monorail from Washington to Boston

The intriguing new Boston history blog, Looking Backward, has a short tidbit on a prospective D.C. to Boston monorail that, obviously, never got built.
“Illustration by Andre Castaigne for article “The Brennan Mono-Rail Car,” McClure’s Magazine, 1910
A proposed elevated line running from Washington to Boston based on the gyroscope-balanced monorail car Irish-Australian inventor, Louis Brennan. His [...]

Link for 2010-01-15

Never mind what people believe—how can we change what they do? A chat with Robert Cialdini | Grist
Cialdini describes six “weapons of influence”:
* Reciprocity: people will repay favors.
* Commitment and Consistency: people will stick to commitments made publicly.
* Social Proof: people will do what other people do.
* Authority: people obey authority figures.
* Liking: people are [...]

Link for 2010-01-14

Wanted: A Cultural Revolution | Marc Gunther
"Consumer culture is not only causing environmental havoc, it’s often failing to deliver the well-being that it promises. Most people understand–and psychological studies of happiness confirm–that after we have achieved basic economic security (itself a cultural norm), what really makes us happy are close relationships, meaningful work, connections to [...]

Link for 2010-01-13

DENIS HAYES: Mr. Earth Day Gets Ready to Rumble – TIME
"Hayes, 54, didn't set out to be an environmentalist. He grew up in Camas, Wash., a small paper-mill town where the air stank from sulfur fumes. Like most other people there, he loved the outdoor life, but his concern over the damage the mills were [...]

The Moral Dimension of the Skyscraper

The skyscraper is a monument to power and the money-makes-right moral triumph of the people who built it. And in an ascendant America, though the richest might have financed the construction, all who were living in the country could share in the pleasure of knowing that it was Americans who were able to spend the most money. Our rich could beat up their rich. In the salad days of Dubai, the same financial force was on display.

Green Jobs?

The Wall Street Journal addresses one of the big issues with pushing material-heavy green jobs in the U.S.:
But the bigger question, it seems, is whether clean-tech manufacturing is really the best way for America to jump on the green bandwagon. Manufacturing jobs in all sectors have for decades been fleeing to countries with lower costs [...]

The Cold War Was Very Weird

The Cold War was a political magnet that clearly distorted U.S. energy policy…
And that’s as good an excuse as any to post this incredible card of a very angry Santa Father Frost (see comments) unleashing a bag full of Soviet whoop-ass on some enemies.
Unfortunately, there’s no context for the post card.
Via @Colin_Peters

[...]

Coal Is Not Coal

A few years ago, I remember talking to a guy down at Stanford named Jeremy Carl about coal. At one point he said to me something like, “I wish I could take coal from one hundred different mines all over the world and line them up so that people could see that all coals are [...]