I gave a speech last month at LSU, where the Honors College had picked HOT as the “common book” all first-year students read. Unfortunately, I couldn’t deliver the full speech because I was interrupted, three separate times, by fire alarms. Was that because I was talking about climate change on a campus drenched in oil and gas money? Read my piece in The Gambit Weekly and decide for yourself: http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/alarm-bells-and-climate-change/Content?oid=2267429/…. Read more

Humanity has only 30 years in which to quit carbon-based fuels entirely, says the IPCC. Luckily, that’s feasible, if we continue globally scaling up wind and especially solar power as fast as we have been–which, astonishingly, has been faster than the adoption rates for cell phones, says solar exec Danny Kennedy:… Read more

McKibben’s latest book Oil and Honey tells the inside story of the campaign to block the Keystone XL pipeline. McKibben has been arguing for some time that much of the world’s remaining reserves of fossil fuel must be left in the ground if we are to have a fair chance at surviving climate change. The new IPCC Fifth Assessment report agrees with him:… Read more

With extreme weather events reaching unprecedented frequency worldwide, I argue that we need a paradigm shift in climate policy. The current focus on reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions should expand to include trying to reduce the 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide that is ALREADY in the Earth’s atmosphere. Can photosynthesis, in the form of biochar, help achieve that goal? Read my on-the-ground report in Slate:… Read more

It ain’t easy to contemplate the destruction of the climate on which all life depends: many people find the subject so distressing they choose to ignore or deny it instead. But my review of a new book by author Mary Pipher, The Green Boat, argues that the best way to avoid despair and apathy is to join with others in facing the facts and trying to do something about them: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/14/mark-hertsgaard-analyzes-the-psychology-of-climate-change-activism.html/…. Read more

Here’s a surprising take from Michael Pollan on how raising cattle differently could actually reverse climate change rather than worsen it. This is the first in a series of articles Slate (and others) will publish this month on “Food and Climate Change: Connections and Solutions.” I further explore the power of photosynthesis to reverse climate change later in the series:… Read more