MIT engineer warns of nuclear Armageddon, urges preventative measures

There are nearly 450 nuclear reactors in the world, with hundreds more either under construction or in the planning stages. Imagine what havoc it would wreak on our civilization, and the planet's ecosystems, if we were to suddenly experience not just...

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. --Rita Mae Brown (also popularly attributed to Einstein)

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! --inscription on the Statue of Liberty, from a poem by Emma Lazarus

Yesterday morning, as...

I had my hair cut last week. While she was cutting my hair, Kelli and I were talking about the Gulf Oil Spill. As she swept the clumps of hair off her salon's floor she said, "that is a nice contribution". Explaining herself, Kelli proudly pulled out a large garbage...

"Admittedly world organization with common obedience to law would be a solution. Not that easy.... Things cannot be forced from the top. The international relinquishing of sovereignty would have to spring from the people--it would be so strong that the elected delegates would be turned out of office if they...

Failure is not in falling down, but in refusing to get up. --Chinese Proverb

There are dark clouds gathering on the horizon. They are the clouds of six hugely troubling global trends, climate change being just one of the six. Individually, each of these trends is a potential civilization...

Watching the poor people suffering in Haiti points out our all-too-human vulnerability when disaster strikes, things fall apart, nothing is working, and the few facilities and rescue workers that are functioning are hopelessly overloaded! Most Americans are in the danger zone for some kind of disaster, whether it be terrorism,...

Last summer, I was admiring a pair of adult quails ambling through the sage brush adjacent to my back yard. Following close at hand were roughly twenty puffball-like baby quails. Apparently I got a little too close for comfort. At a signal from the adults, the entire flock of puffballs...

"Certain bacterial infections now defy all antibiotics." --Stuart Levy, M.D.

"We have to recognize that we are in the most dramatic moment of the epidemic... And the number of cases will unfortunately increase and that's why we will reinforce all the measures necessary to contain the outbreak." --Mexican Health...

Bernie Madoff sure made a name for himself, didn't he? First he made a name for himself as a "Wall Street Genius" whose coveted firm not only promised, but consistently delivered, extraordinarily high annual returns on investment, even when the economy was down. More recently he made a name for...

Sometimes it feels as if America is a huge ocean liner, much like the Titanic, steaming full speed ahead on dark nights through treacherous iceberg-filled waters. So far, we have clipped a few icebergs, and are taking on water, but we are still managing to stay afloat. Like the Titanic,...

Six months ago, I had little hope that we could turn things around in our world to reverse the trends that are bringing us to the brink of economic and environmental collapse. America's historic election of Barrack Hussein Obama as president of our country has rekindled my hope that we...

Unregulated greed will result in the demise of our planet just as surely as it is causing the collapse of our economy.

There has been a morbid fascination lately in watching the "greed bubble" collapse, taking with it what is left of the equity in many American's homes at...

Could You Get By, Like Your Grandparents Did Back In 1929 When Their Jobs and Savings Evaporated?

When the stock market crashed in 1929, most Americans saw the value of their investments evaporate overnight, and then watched helplessly as their cash disappeared in a seemingly endless stream of bank closings....

"We have the capacity and ability to create a remarkably different economy, one that can restore ecosystems and protect the environment while bringing forth innovation, prosperity, meaningful work, and true security. The restorative economy unites ecology and commerce into one sustainable act of production and distribution that mimics and enhances...

Watching the Olympics with the TV controller in hand, ready to hit the mute button on a moments notice to silence the seemingly endless stream of commercials, has given me a lot of time to ponder what it means to be "An American."

Does it make me less of...

Recently Katharine Walton asked me, "What is your vision of our world or our country in 10, 20, or 50 years?"

Door #1 (Making the Shift to Sustainability):
We proactively manage the transition away from fossil fuels and Make the Shift to Sustainability. In ten years...

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These days, most people sense that our world is off balance and that we are sliding steadily towards some dark abyss. It can be hard to keep a cheerful positive outlook when you consider just these three signs of trouble:

1. Recent record high oil prices may be just the...

With less than 5% of the world's population, and 3% of the world's known oil reserves, the US is currently consuming nearly one quarter of the world's oil production. Our American "oil habit" is costing us dearly in more ways than one. To support this oil habit, America imports roughly...