iPhone app iPad app Android phone app Android tablet app

Ben Jervey
GET UPDATES FROM Ben Jervey
 
Ben is a writer and editor covering climate, energy, environment, and sustainability issues. He is the blog editor for OnEarth and a contributing editor to DeSmogBlog. He is also now working with Focus the Nation to create an Energy 101 primer and curriculum for their much celebrated student clean energy leaders program. Earlier, he worked as the first Environment Editor at GOOD, and once upon a time created/edited/curated sustaiNYC, a "reblog" covering NYC's sustainability scene. A few years back he also wrote a book on living a lower impact life in the big city. A bicycle enthusiast, Ben has ridden across the United States and through much of Europe.

Blog Entries by Ben Jervey

Help Combat Energy Illiteracy: An Energy 101 Primer

(3) Comments | Posted May 30, 2012 | 2:50 PM

A few years ago, over 1,000 Americans responded to a Public Agenda survey about energy. The results were startling. Nearly four in ten American adults could not name a single fossil fuel. Over half of respondents couldn't name a renewable energy source.

A few years before that,...

Read Post

Pipeline Jobs Are a Pipe Dream: Cornell Report Busts Myth of Keystone XL Job Creation

(5) Comments | Posted September 30, 2011 | 11:13 AM

Proponents of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project would like you to believe that, if approved, its construction will put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work. This is plainly untrue, according to a new report by the Cornell University Global Labor Institute.

TransCanada, the Canadian...

Read Post

Road to Copenhagen: Waiting for America

(1) Comments | Posted November 5, 2009 | 10:57 AM

2009-09-29-AANheader.jpg

From September through December, I'll be tracking the American positions in the international climate treaty negotiations for the Adopt-A-Negotiator project. Together, we're tracking the negotiators from twelve key countries up to and through the December COP15 meetings in Copenhagen.

As the last...

Read Post

Fear and Loathing on the Road to Copenhagen

(4) Comments | Posted September 29, 2009 | 1:22 PM

2009-09-29-AANheader.jpg
Over the next three months, I'll be tracking the American positions in the international climate treaty negotiations for the Adopt-A-Negotiator project. Together, we're tracking the negotiators from twelve key countries up to and through the December COP15 meetings in Copenhagen.

I've...

Read Post

Destination: Greenland -- Lessons from the Ice

(6) Comments | Posted April 28, 2009 | 11:16 AM

Destination GreenlandStanding in the polar wilderness, the realities of global warming can seem utterly paradoxical. Surrounded by a vast expanse of white, the Arctic looks and feels completely untouched by man, as far away from human civilization as any place could ever be....

Read Post

The Moral Case Against Tar Sands

(3) Comments | Posted February 23, 2009 | 2:56 PM

Everyone (well everyone who cares about climate change) wanted to hear what President Obama would say about Alberta's tar sands when he hopped border to Canada. Everyone was disappointed. In his meeting with Prime Minister Harper they glossed over the issue, offering only the promise of a "clean energy...

Read Post

It's Not the Planet That Needs Saving, or, Why Earth Day's All Wrong

(22) Comments | Posted April 22, 2008 | 7:40 PM

It's not the planet that needs saving. The Earth, no matter how badly we abuse it, is going to be just fine. (At least for about 5 billion years until the sun goes all red giant and torches this third rock.) It has overcome worse scourges than what we're dealing...

Read Post

Letter to CNN: Don't Let Coal Dictate the Debate

(2) Comments | Posted January 30, 2008 | 3:39 PM

An open letter to CNN and debate moderator Wolf Blitzer:

Mr. Blitzer-
As one of the majority of Americans that feel that clean, renewable energy is a "good decision" for America, and as one that agrees with the IPCC and our nation's top scientists that global warming is one...

Read Post

The Greenwash: Why Not, Toyota?

(6) Comments | Posted November 24, 2007 | 10:22 AM

Earlier this month, Toyota launched a new ad campaign championing their eco-cred. Called "Why Not?," the campaign will--at about $40 million--ring in as the largest in their history, and the focal tv spot can already be seen all over primetime. So why are so many environmental groups including...

Read Post

Postcard From the Top of the Earth

(2) Comments | Posted October 2, 2007 | 3:23 PM

So I'm sitting in the rolling and pitching cabin of a 100-year old Dutch schooner, somewhere well above the Arctic Circle, with no land for (literal) days in any direction, tapping out a prospective blog post that'll someway, somehow find it's way, via satellite phone, an intermediary switchboard, and your...

Read Post

Katrina Two Years Later: The Big Easy Still in Big Trouble

(8) Comments | Posted August 29, 2007 | 10:05 AM

It's been two full years since Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans, wrecking homes, takings lives, casting off refugees and leaving neighborhoods trashed and uninhabitable. Even in the storm's immediate aftermath, the human health crisis caused by dangerous environmental conditions were largely glossed over by a media more concerned (somewhat...

Read Post