How People Really Think About Climate Change

Oh wait! They don’t.
In a great post by Marc Gunther, “What’s for lunch? Behaviorial economics meets climate change,” he summarizes Dan Ariely, director of the Center for Advanced Hindsight, on why it’s hard for American brains to take global warming seriously.
The climate crisis is a particular challenge for behavioral economists. It’s a long-term problem, and [...]

links for 2009-11-17

Stephanie Cooke – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Stephanie Cooke has written that:
'the AEC had become an oligarchy controlling all facets of the military and civilian sides of nuclear energy, promoting them and at the same time attempting to regulate them, and it had fallen down on the regulatory side … a growing legion of critics saw [...]

The New Food System in Three 1940s Infographics

Fortune Magazine infographics from the middle of the century are fantastic at depicting the astonishment of the business class at the new world of plastics, rockets, and chemicals that emerged in the 1940s. Each new wonder industry increased the amount of energy we use, as Buckminster Fuller notes above.
For many people, the most important energy [...]

The Green Tech Breakthrough Might Not Be Tech

A few days ago, new Internet friend Joshua Glenn sent me this wonderful photo. He described it as “a shuttered business that was apparently a bit too far ahead of its time.”
The next day, I was talking with Michael Riordan, who edited the best single history of solar, A Golden Thread, and he mentioned that [...]

links for 2009-11-11

Interview Transcripts — Venture Capitalists Oral History Project
"Venture capital was not a term when these narrators began to practice “risk investment” in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The oral histories describe the evolution of the field into the industry of today, focusing on its earliest emergence in Northern California. The narrators describe their [...]

links for 2009-11-10

The Breakthrough Institute: The Real Policy Lesson From the Chinese Wind Turbine "Scare"
"The reason for the lack of American presence in wind turbine manufacturing is clear: inconsistent government investment and public policy support. Prior to 2006, the U.S. production tax credit (PTC) for wind installations expired on an almost annual-basis before eventual reinstatement, leading to [...]

links for 2009-11-07

Levittown, Pa. | Building the Suburban Dream
"Between 1950 and 1960, 20 million people were drawn to mass housing developments on the outskirts of America's cities. In terms of sheer numbers, the move to the suburbs outstripped the fabled Westward migration of the 1800s many times over."
"The new suburbs combined country comforts with city conveniences. With [...]

links for 2009-11-06

HOUSING: Up from the Potato Fields – TIME
(tags: suburbs solarhomes homes)

Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb
"Levittown has long represented the paradigmatic postwar American suburb. Yet very little in the way of good critical work has been done on the history and significance of this American cultural icon. Over the past decade I have been [...]

links for 2009-11-06

HOUSING: Up from the Potato Fields – TIME
(tags: suburbs solarhomes homes)

Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb
"Levittown has long represented the paradigmatic postwar American suburb. Yet very little in the way of good critical work has been done on the history and significance of this American cultural icon. Over the past decade I have been [...]

links for 2009-11-04

Lyndon B. Johnson: Commencement Address at Holy Cross College.
"There is no simple solution to these problems. In the past there would have been no solution at all. Today, the constantly unfolding conquests of science give man the power over his world and nature which brings the prospect of success within the purview of hope…
First, [...]