Independent Journalist & Author
Keystone, Obama and the US Petro-state
Why is President Obama finding it so hard to announce a decision on Keystone XL? Because, I argue in Bloomberg Businessweek, Mr. Obama presides over a petro-state, a country whose political economy has been dominated by oil so profoundly and for so long that it ranks as an OPEC nation in all but name. The only way Obama (or any US president) can successfully stand up to Big Oil is if he is pushed by a strong, insistent popular movement…. Read more
Chicken Manure, Biochar and Climate Change
Who knew that chicken manure could help to tackle local air pollution, not to mention climate change? The trick? Turn it into biochar, as I report in Yale 360:… Read more
Tags: Blog, Journalism
Double Code Red: The Melting Arctic
Someone had better warn Santa Claus. First it was polar bears who were threatened by global warming. Now it’s reindeer: their numbers have fallen by one-third since the 1990s, according to a British parliament report. It’s past time to ban oil drilling in the fast-melting Arctic, but the US, Russia, China and others have self-destructively different plans, as I report in this piece, which was a cover story in Newsweek Japan and appeared in English in The Daily Beast:… Read more
ExxonMobil Accepts Carbon Price, Privately
ExxonMobil and four other Big Oil companies are already putting a price on carbon pollution for internal corporate planning, reveals a new report from the excellent non-profit, CDP (aka, The Carbon Disclosure Project): https://www.cdp.net/CDPResults/companies-carbon-pricing-2013.pdf/. So are at least 25 other corporate giants, including Microsoft, Google, Walmart, General Electric, Dupont, Disney and Delta Airlines. So it’s high time that these corporations–many of whom, such as ExxonMobil, have spent millions of dollars to confuse the public and the media about climate change and back obstructionists on Capitol Hill–stop blocking government actions to fight climate change, wouldn’t you say? The corporations could begin by telling Republicans (and oil and coal state Democrats) to… Read more
Tags: Blog
Help Typhoon Victims in Philippines
Typhoon Haiyan, the Category 5 mega-storm that slammed into the eastern Philippines on Friday, has left at least 10,000 people dead and many more injured while destroying vital water, electricity and transportation infrastructure, according to the latest news reports. The suffering is terrible, the need for outside assistance urgent. If you feel so inclined, please join me in making a donation to Oxfam’s relief and rebuilding effort. In my years of reporting from various distressed situations around the world, I’ve been consistently impressed with Oxfam’s work, which combines immediate post-disaster aid with longer-term goals of development, justice and sustainability. You can make a donation specifically for the Philippines here:… Read more
Tags: Blog
Wall Street Journal Publishes Al Gore!?!
Amazing! The Wall Street Journal, which has been in the climate denial business longer and louder than any other news organization in the world, has just published Al Gore arguing the investment case for leaving 2/3 of remaining fossil fuels in the ground: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304655104579163663464339836/. Might the financial class finally be awakening to the gravity of the climate crisis? Or is this just a day when pigs fly, sidewalks talk and the sun sets in the… Read more
Tags: Blog
Latest Book
By now, almost everyone knows what Edward Snowden did: leak top secret documents revealing that the US government was spying on hundreds of millions of people around the world. But if you want to know why Snowden did it, the way he did it, you need to know the stories of two other men.
The first is Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on the very same surveillance ten years before Snowden did and got crushed. The other is The Third Man, a former senior Pentagon official who comes forward in this book for the first time to describe how his superiors repeatedly broke the law to punish Drake—and unwittingly taught Snowden how to evade their clutches.
Pick up your copy at:
Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble