Autumn is my favorite time of year. The cool weather, colorful leaves, and fewer bugs make it a great time to be outdoors, and as few places in the world get colorful displays like we get in New England it is one of the things that makes this a special place to be. Leaves are […]
For at least the last 25 years, Rhode Island has relied on the medical-industrial complex to serve as an economic engine. The quest for patentable, scalable cures for the diseases of industrialism has taken up a huge amount of the energy and resources devoted to economic development in RI. There are deep-seated problems with this […]
Global forest losses are one of the big drivers of climate change. RI needs to step up and stop deforestation as part of our climate policy. And if solar is a part of our future energy strategy we need very good numbers on the trade offs of solar for forest. I do not think solar […]
These days it is hard to avoid thinking about the COVID-19 outbreak. I am mostly working on climate issues, and I am sure there are conspiracy theories about how they are linked. Conspiracies aside, there is one way that the virus and our climate are definitely linked, and that is through deforestation. Let me explain. […]
It’s been quite a year for the environment. There’s been good … bad … and really bad… Check out our list of some of the top local, national and international environmental happenings of 2019. Emissions and fossil fuel use continue to skyrocket, leading to ever greater disasters. Greta Thunberg, Sunrise, and Extinction Rebellion and the […]
To the Editor, On April 7 Theodore Gatchell’s column really showed his true colors: Authoritarian. His disparagements of the workers at Microsoft who do not wish to build weapons demonstrates a complete disregard for civil liberties and democracy. The people have a right to say no to the war machine, just as we have the […]
To the Editor, The headline in the April 7 Providence Journal was “RI economy cools off in first quarter.” It then quoted all the usual suspects as to why and how much. Inside the headline was “Economy steady but not spectacular,” referring to the national economy. What the first article neglected to say was that […]
To the Editor, On Sunday, March 24, The Boston Globe published an op-ed by Paul Krugman titled “Holy Voodoo Batman” in which he notes that the Trump tax cut boom has fizzled, and no one thinks that it had more than the most short-term effect on the American economy. Growth rates, for myriad reasons, are […]
Climate change because of deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels is the existential crisis of our times. The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has gone from 280 parts per million to 410 parts per million since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and almost all of the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere has […]
I have been composting since 1981, when I first started cleaning sheep barns for a cut of the manure. I fed sheep manure compost to my garden every year for 15 years and watched the clumpy clay and rock soil turn into black earth that could grow anything. Then I moved to Providence and after […]