The Green New Deal and Ham
Do you like The Green New Deal and ham?* I do not like them, Sam-I-am. I do not like The Green New Deal and ham…. Would you like them Here or there? … Sam! If you will let me be. I will try them. You will see. Say! I [...]
Can Big Oil and Utilities Help in the Transition from Carbon?
For a while there has been popular speculation that utilities were in a death spiral. They have been hit with pollution regulation, clean energy mandates, higher fuel costs and disruption from clean low cost distributed renewable energy. Their primary purpose has been to “keep-the-lights-on,” and the world is changing [...]
Sitting Still in the Woods in the Aftermath of Kavanaugh
The feathers of a sparrow drift down like snow out of a sky made bluer by yellow leaves and white clouds. A victim of a Cooper’s hawk. Life seeking and reducing everything to amino acids. The Junko is oblivious. The energy of the sparrow will power the hawk for [...]
Environmental Messaging – Are You Amplifying These Frames?
Most of us are too busy to think. Yet we are constantly exposed to frames that reshape our thinking. For environmentalists, most of the frames we are exposed to are created by fossil fuel and right wing political think tanks. The result is that public opinion moves toward their [...]
Sitting in Trees
It’s been a while. Maybe two million years. For me personally, about sixty years. What, you ask? Since I’ve sat in a tree. Which is where I am right now. As a species we used to sit in trees. Mostly for safety and to escape nighttime predators; the lions [...]
A Good Day – Not for our National Parks!
A bald eagle wings southeast across blue skies on the north shore of Yellowstone Lake. We are just inside the east park boundary. Ian (10) and Teo (7) are playing in a snow field just over a pass. Being from Atlanta, they have almost never seen real snow up [...]
Environmental Messaging – Will They Kill Your Messenger?
A Republican, a Democrat, a utility executive, and a construction manager walked into a bar. They had been invited by a lobbyist. There’s no punchline. This is what actually happened. I was at a renewable energy seminar in the Twin Cities. There were four people on the panel plus [...]
Why Do Republican Leaders Hate Renewable Energy… and the Environment?
There is an attack against renewable energy and the environment in this country. It is being conducted by large utilities, coal, and oil companies. The impact will affect our energy policies, manufacturing, economy, and environment for decades. It is abetted by Republican state and federal legislators that are being [...]
Climate Messaging: Silver Bullets
The Lone Ranger used them. They’re supposed to kill werewolves. They seem like a cool idea, one that could possess magical powers. But when it comes to environmental and climate messaging, they are not much good. In a previous post I covered the balance of fear and hope required [...]
Environmental Messaging – Nobody is Listening to You on Facebook
I am new to Facebook and Twitter. I started them out of curiosity. For me, they are an experiment. Criticizing social media is now a national pastime. But this post isn’t a criticism of Facebook or Twitter, or about the Russian or Cambridge Analytics misuse of Facebook. It’s about [...]