Latest
|
ArticlesMark Hertsgaard has written hundreds of articles over the last two decades for newspapers and magazines across the world. Publications include Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Der Spiegel, Der Zeit, The Guardian, La Repubblica, NRC Handelsblad, Yomiuri Shimbum, Le nouvel observateur, Ha'aretz, and the Daily Star. Running on Empty"After 2015, easily accessible supplies of oil and gas probably will no longer keep up with demand." ... >>>> Outside AgitatorThere is less news than meets the eye in Barack Obama's reported offer of a cabinet position for Al Gore. ... >>>> Gore's moral obligationThe lesson Gore seems to have drawn from his defeats in the White House is that being president is not enough to create real change, especially if powerful interests are against you. >>>> Global warming's cold warFrom the time he took office in 2001, Bush has presided over a relentless American build-up of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. >>>> The Making of a Climate MovementContrary to popular belief, asking people to do more actually resulted in a bigger response. >>>> Calling Bush's bluffLike Exxon-Mobil did a few months ago, the Bush White House is desperately trying to convey a fresh, friendlier image on climate change. >>>> Adapt or DieWe have entered a new era of global warming, and our paradigm for confronting it must change accordingly. >>>> Living Through The StormBangladesh is a showcase of what will happen under climate change. >>>> Killer Weather AheadThe numbers imply that there is very little time for humanity to avoid passing a climate threshold. >>>> Mutiny for the BountyEdible sea life will completely disappear by 2048 if current trends of overfishing and pollution continue. >>>> Big Win for EnvirosWhen it comes to elections, the environment is now a giant killer. >>>> Return to Chelyabinsk28,000 people received average individual doses fifty-seven times greater than those later received at Chernobyl. >>>> California Leads on ClimatePavley's triumph illustrates how far California is ahead of America in fighting climate change. >>>> Green Grows GrassrootsAs popular and wealthy as the environmental movement appears, the Bush era has exposed it as something of a paper tiger. >>>> The G-8's Risky Nuclear EmbraceThe financial outlook of nuclear power has always been, and remains today, poor, >>>> Party of a Different ColorThe climate change debate in Europe is much less politicized than in the United States, and there is wide consensus that impacts are already being felt. >>>> While Washington SleptMost Americans heard nothing about Hurricane Katrina's association with global warming. >>>> A Dragon Slayer ReturnsMcCloskey says the main reason he decided to challenge Pombo is that Pombo personifies the pay-to-play corruption, ideological fanaticism and anti-environmentalism that have taken over the Republican Party. >>>> Green PowerTwenty-five years after their founding, the German Greens remain without question the most influential environmentally based party ever. >>>> Was Ohio Stolen in 2004 or Wasn't It?If voting machines were hacked, skeptics argue, that could explain some improbable results in three Bush strongholds near Cincinnati. >>>> Global Storm WarningSkeptics now trumpet scientific studies that portray Katrina as simply a manifestation of a natural long-term pattern in which first strong then weak hurricanes predominate. >>>> In for a Crude AwakeningIn a world where oil demand sets new records every year, the arrival of peak oil promises to bring more frequent and debilitating shortages, higher and more volatile prices, and a host of other nasty consequences. >>>> Nuclear energy can't solve global warmingThe Bush administration and much of Congress are pushing hard to revive the nuclear industry, which provides 20 percent of Americai's electricity but has not had a new reactor order since 1974. >>>> The G-8: Climate and the Nuclear OptionGeorge W. Bush has made it clear he's not interested in doing anything about climate change except study it. >>>> The Silent EnvironmentalistYou were an African-American man, with a banjo and a backpack, and you were silent. Did people treat you as an oddity? >>>> Beyond BoycottsThe activists' goal is not simply to get a corporation to clean up its own act but to use that corporation to push an entire market sector in a green direction. >>>> Kyoto Can't Save UsThe problem is that Kyoto governs only future emissions. No matter how well the protocol works, it will have no effect on past emissions, which are what have made global warming unavoidable. >>>> Too many rumors, too few facts to examine eco-activism caseWho was behind the 1990 Oakland car bombing that put environmental activists and erstwhile lovers Bari and Darryl Cherney in the hospital and then under arrest? >>>> Why Dean should take chargeThey insist that Democrats would be crazy to pick a raving liberal like Dean as their next party chairman. >>>> A Challenge to EnvirosShellenberger and Nordhaus say they've gotten little formal response from their main targets: the environmental movement's largest organizations and the foundations that support them. >>>> Bhopal: The Biggest Crime You've Never Heard OfThe scene around them was apocalyptic. There were corpses everywhere, many of them children. >>>> Bush Has No Mandate, Just A Better Machine"Every day I get up thinking [about] what...I can do today to advance the conservative agenda." >>>> Climate, the Absent IssueClimate change is to the twenty-first century what the nuclear arms race was to the twentieth. >>>> World to AmericansMost Americans don't realize it, but when we elect our president, we are also electing the de facto president of the world. >>>> Left in the wingsLeft-leaning activists are mounting an unprecedented grassroots campaign to educate and turn out voters for Kerry. >>>> Fighting poverty, from one point of view"The World's Banker" offers an informative but one-sided description of how the institution has approached that fight during Wolfensohn's two terms as its president." >>>> Clinging to the Green DreamThe most important lesson I learned during my global travels was the difference between optimism and hope, and that lesson continues to sustain me. >>>> Kerry's Energy PlanBecause transportation accounts for 70 percent of America's oil consumption, any serious alternative must confront the nation's addiction to automobiles. >>>> Why Bush Should LoseBy mid-July, Americans were evenly split on whether Bush would win. >>>> Terry FirmaSchwarzenegger has stood up on a number of environmental issues and said to the White House, "We're not with you on this." >>>> Kerry is green, but brown is showingKerry would not sign Kyoto, but neither would he scrap it like Bush did. >>>> Ronald Reagan: Beloved by the MediaReagan's accomplishments as president are impossible to understand without recognizing the way he and his advisers turned the American media, especially television, into a national megaphone for his policies. >>>> America as Environmental SuperpowerDuring two extended journeys around the world since 1991, I have seen the triumph of American consumerism in virtually every one of the twenty-five countries I visited. >>>> Running on EmptyImagine what would happen if the world's supply of oil were magically to vanish overnight. >>>> World Bank on horns of dilemmaThe commission urged that the bank halt all coal loans immediately and all oil loans by 2008. >>>> How Nick Berg's Death Dooms Bush's Re-electionThe recent beheading of American contractor Nick Berg by Islamic militants in retaliation for the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib signals that the war in Iraq may be descending into the same tit-for-tat cycle of violence that has made the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so bloody and intractable for decades. >>>> Bhopal's Legacy"People still have pain and breathlessness, and now we are seeing cancers too." >>>> Three Mile Island"There's a nuclear imperative in this country. We know it, Wall Street knows it, and we're prepared to meet it." >>>> Chapter and verse on the need for regime changeIt was Dean who showed his fellow Democrats that it was OK to fight back against George W. Bush. >>>> A New Ice Age?An extraordinary new report by an elite Pentagon planning unit has declared that climate change is a national security threat of the greatest urgency and demands an immediate response. >>>> Nuclear Insecurity"In more than 50 percent of our tests of the Los Alamos facility, we got in, captured the plutonium, got out again, and didn't fire a shot because we didn't encounter any guards." >>>> The Once-Green GOPThere are also honorable Republicans out there who are appalled by the arrogant, dishonest extremism of the Bush crowd, which they see as a betrayal of real conservatism. >>>> How Bush could save his presidency — and why he won'tBush led the United States into war on the basis of assertions that are increasingly being revealed to have been exaggerated, misleading or outright deceptive. >>>> Unified Field TheoryNot only are enviros and other progressives spending more on the 2004 election, they are also spending differently. >>>> Trashing the EnvironmentBush promised in a September 2000 campaign speech to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide. >>>> Global Image ProblemWhat the media call globalization is in fact largely Americanization, and it producing a world that looks more like the United States by the day. >>>> Why we still don't get it, one year onEven sophisticated foreign observers don't appreciate how poorly served Americans are by our media and education systems, how narrow the range of information and debate is in "the land of the free". >>>> Future heat"My fellow Americans, this summer has been difficult for all of us. But I bring you a message of hope tonight — a vision for how we can move beyond this crisis and reclaim the bountiful future that is America's promise." >>>> California Green LightSigned into law by Governor Gray Davis on July 22, the global warming bill requires that the greenhouse gas emissions of all passenger vehicles sold in the state be reduced to the "maximum" economically feasible extent starting in model year 2009. >>>> The Truth on WarmingU.S. Climate Action Report 2002 made headlines because it contradicted so much of what the Administration has said about global warming. >>>> Bush & Global WarmingThe good news is that the world has put in place a binding framework requiring greenhouse gas reductions, and this framework will likely become law despite the US boycott. >>>> No Shrinking ViolenceTwo political associates of peasant environmentalists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera have narrowly survived an apparent assassination attempt, raising grave questions about Montiel and Cabrera's own safety following their Nov. 8 release from jail by Mexican President Vicente Fox. >>>> The Real Price of OilFor the world at large, the most serious consequence of continued reliance on oil and other fossil fuels will be accelerating climate change in the 21st century. >>>> Dioxin Study is a Political Hot Potato for EPABush Senior and his EPA chief, William Reilly, ordered the study at the specific behest of the chemical industry, which complained that environmentalists' calls for limits on dioxin were based on hype, not sound science. >>>> The Calculus of Consumption: Shifting Blame to the NorthMy San Francisco friend had one child in diapers and a second on the way, thus giving him the Brazilian equivalent of 26 children. >>>> Russia's Environmental CrisisIts persecution of Nikitin and its dismantling of environmental laws appear to be sparking a resurgence of green activism in Russia. >>>> Mikhail Gorbachev explains what's rotten in Russia"When I began to work in Moscow on the Central Committee, I saw a really terrible picture of the consequences of what we had done to the environment and a certain view of nature took shape for me, which was very important. Then I had to go through many other experiences, including Chernobyl." >>>> California could end clear-cuttingTimber industry officials say that clear-cutting makes for healthier, more productive forests. >>>> The California chainsaw massacreWhat is indisputable is that clear-cutting is exploding in California, provoking a legislative showdown next week that may force Gov. Gray Davis to choose between environmentalists who once endorsed him and a timber industry that now bankrolls him. >>>> A Green Foreign PolicyExxon chairman Lee Raymond visited China a few weeks before the Kyoto conference to urge his hosts not to let unfounded fears of climate change reduce China's fossil-fuel consumption. >>>> Greener Than Thou"There is an excellent chance that if global temperatures rise modestly, the planet will just grow very much greener than it is today." >>>> Remaking the World Bank to Remake the WorldWolfensohn has acknowledged the Bank's previous mistakes and promised it would do a better job of serving the world's poor and respecting the environment. >>>> A Global Green DealMaking use of both market incentives and government leadership, a 21st century Global Green Deal would do for environmental technologies what government and industry have recently done so well for computer and Internet technologies: launch their commercial takeoff. >>>> Gore in the BalanceThe truth is, the environment could be the key to a Gore victory in November, if he has the wit to link it to the issue that decides most U.S. presidential elections: the economy. >>>> Bought and paid forHow will our children and grandchildren ever forgive us, Gore asked, if we do not act in the face of overwhelming evidence that burning more oil and coal is changing the earth's climate? >>>> Will We Run Out of Gas?No, unfortunately not. >>>> Corporate GreenhouseAs companies, workers and governments around the world are proving every day, restoring our planet's ailing ecosystems could become the biggest economic enterprise of the twenty-first century, a bountiful source of jobs, profits and competitiveness. >>>> Guangzhou offers glimpse of our polluted futureStraddling the Pearl River 90 miles north of Hong Kong, the city of Guangzhou stands at the epicenter of the boom that has made China one of the world's fastest growing economies. >>>> The Nile at Mile OneI wanted to see how Churchill's ideas compared to African reality nearly a century later, and what that implied about our contemporary environmental dilemma. >>>> Spielberg's Other Lost WorldActivists instead want the Ballona property turned into a public park and wildlife refuge. >>>> To the Nuclear LighthouseAn excerpt from Mark Hertsgaard's book, "Earth Odyssey". >>>> Earth Worst1998 has been a year of extreme weather, both in the United States and abroad, and scientists say humanity is at least partly to blame. >>>> Our Real China ProblemIn Beijing, Xi'an, and other cities of the north Zhenbing and I had walked in air so thick with coal dust and car fumes that even sunny days looked overcast and foggy. In the bone-dry province of Shanxi, a day's journey west of Beijing, we had ridden by train for hours without seeing anything that resembled woods — there were only a few scattered, spindly trees, which looked ready to expire any minute. Everywhere, it seemed, the land had been scalped, the water poisoned, the air made toxic and dark. >>>> Hot AirAmerican scientists are no less convinced than their European colleagues that climate change has begun, but that conviction has been slow to penetrate policy-making circles in Washington. >>>> On Reporters: Steve Talbot interviews Mark HertsgaardEssentially in Washington what you have is a Palace Court Press. And they reflect the views within the palace that is known as official Washington. And essentially they report the spectrum of opinion from Democrat to Republican, which many Americans have now come to recognize, is not a very broad spectrum. >>>> A World Awash in ChemicalsPublished in 1962, "Silent Spring" helped ignite the modern American environmental movement with its eloquent warning that DDT and other pesticides had devastated wildlife populations and threatened human health. In the process, "Silent Spring" gave the chemical industry a public-relations black eye that lingers even now. >>>> Oprah Buffa"Nightline" may have been born during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1980, and it may have staked out the journalistic high ground with globe-trotting investigative reports and hard-hitting political interviews, but in recent years it has been infected by the same fluff-in-mouth disease that has degraded the news media as a whole. >>>> Still ticking ..."The first thing a couple here do if there is mutual attraction is screw," Ron complained as we biked through town the next day. As a liberation theology priest, Ron harbored no reflexive loyalty to Vatican dogma, and though on the boat he'd laughed as much as the girls, he was sobered by the real-life consequences of his parishioners' unbridled sexuality. >>>> Foreign language articlesSe finisce il petrolioUn tempo erano solo gli ambientalisti e i paranoici a lanciare l'allarme sull'esaurimento delle riserve petrolifere. Ora non più. All'interno' dell'industria petrolifera sono sempre più numerosi i convinti che l'era del petrolio abbondante e abbordabile sia agli sgoccioli. Se hanno ragione potrebbero essere guai grossi per l'economia mondiale e, paradossalmente, per il clima del pianeta. >>>> Il potere inquinatoreDove è Al Gore? L'uomo che aveva ricevuto più voti di George W. Bush nel 2000, che per otto anni è stato vicepresidente di Bill Clinton, il cui proselitismo per combattere il cambiamento del clima è stato premiato con un Oscar e insignito del Premio Nobel per la Pace, si è risolutamente rifiutato di candidarsi alla presidenza, anche se avrebbe verosimilmente possibilità di vincere. >>>> Gorbaciov made in UsaVent'anni dopo aver lasciato la Casa Bianca, l'ultimo Ronald Reagan rimane il repubblicano più popolare d'America. >>>> Vivere sull'orlo dell'apocalisseAnisur Rahman è il sindaco di un villaggio che gli sta letteralmente scomparendo sotto i piedi: è questa la sorte che attende Antarpara, attraversato dal fiume Brahmaputra, uno dei maggiori dell'Asia. >>>> Fare a meno del petrolioIl clima del pianeta è già stato compromesso per molti anni a venire. Ora si lotta per la sopravvivenza. >>>> An den Fronten des KlimawandelsMit seinen graumelierten Locken und seinem nachdenklichen Auftreten wirkt Chris West wie ein typischer Professor mittleren Alters, wenn man ihn die Straßen der Oxford Universität entlanggehen sieht. >>>> Größer, weiter, grüner»Mit unserer Initiative für grüne Gebäude kann der Staat den Energieverbrauch bis zum Jahr 2015 um 20 Prozent reduzieren«, schwärmt Schwarzeneggers Umweltberater Terry Tamminen. >>>> Dieser Mann verändert das KlimaDabei ist es schon bemerkenswert, dass Gores mögliches Comeback überhaupt diskutiert wird. Vor knapp sechs Jahren, nach seiner demütigenden Niederlage gegen George W. Bush — eine Niederlage, die viele eher als Unterwerfung ansahen, weil Gore sich nicht vor dem Obersten Gerichtshof gegen die krude Taktiererei der Bush-Mannschaft wehrte —, sah es so aus, als sei Gores Karriere vorbei. >>>> |
|