As Shell was getting ready to poke the first hole in the Chukchi Sea floor in Arctic Alaska to begin exploratory drilling, I was getting ready to give two talks in Alaska -- the concluding lecture of the Next North Symposium at the Anchorage Museum on September 8,...

How to Bring the Major Oil Companies Ashore and Halt the Destruction of Our Oceans

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

When you go to the mountains, you go to the mountains.  When it’s the desert, it’s the desert.  When it’s the ocean, though, we generally say that...

What do Arctic drilling and drone killing have in common? They are both being decided by Barack Obama without public debate.

Also oil is a common ground -- drilling will produce it and drones will burn it -- to kill people, animals, and habitats. Both issues must be debated...

I'm an artist. I love art. I create art. I get upset when someone tries to denigrate the very meaning of art. So I was outraged when I learned that on February 21 a group of Greenpeace pranksters installed a 131-feet long banner outside the National Gallery in London with...

American military prefers to make preemptive strikes. We know this. In America, corporations have enormous influence over the government -- these days they essentially run the government. We know this too. And now a giant corporation has made a preemptive strike against nonprofit organizations. "Arctic Ocean drilling: Shell launches preemptive...

On February 17, as I was stepping out the door for an exhibition opening of my arctic photographs and to participate in an environmental panel at Fordham University with former New York State assistant attorney general Robert Emmet Hernan, I received an email news update from Concerned Citizens...

Crossposted with ClimateStoryTellers.org

One of the riskiest and most destructive extreme energy oil exploration projects on the planet is moving toward implementation without scientific understanding or technical preparedness -- Shell's oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean of Alaska.

On August 4, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management,...

Often we focus on a single act -- more heroic the act is, more attention we pay. We also focus on a single result -- more it tends toward either end of a good-bad spectrum, more attention we pay. Along the way, we skip the journey that led to the...

Exactly a week ago on March 3, young climate change activist Tim DeChristopher was convicted for disrupting oil and gas lease sales on public lands in southern Utah. He is an international celebrity right now. Hundreds of articles have come out on this story: you can read news stories

Recently I watched an old Bollywood classic Sholay during a long flight to India to see my ailing parents. I've seen this film before, but this time the familiar macho-masala plot with song-and-dance entertainment helped me think about climate change activism afresh. Retired policeman Thakur Baldev Singh wants...

On Thursday Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is starting a series of hearings to deregulate the U.S. Before I get to his initiative I'd like to say a few words about climate change deniers.

I'm sure it is no surprise to...

People across half of the US just experienced unprecedented cold, snow and ice brought in by a record setting winter storm. Climate deniers have been wondering, we thought it's gonna be warm with global warming, so why is it so cold? The climate scientists, on the other hand, have been...

This January, the House Rhetoricians of the 112th Congress started their climate denialist work with great passion. Representative Fred Upton (R-Michigan), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told Fox News that the GOP-led House won't "let this administration regulate what they've been unable to legislate." This...

When you hear -- "We have the technology, let's go" -- you might perhaps think the statement came from a stately presidential announcement, like when President John F. Kennedy announced that we'll now go to the moon (with space technology) or when President George W. Bush announced that we'll now...

I'll tell you a fictional story 'After The Arctic Spill,' but first some announcements from the real world. Last week was filled with news about offshore oil drilling in the U.S. and it came in all flavors -- "the good, the bad, the ugly."

First, 'the good' -- Last Wednesday...

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) COP16 opens this week in Cancún, Mexico, to discuss green business (November 29 - December 10, 2010). No one is expecting any global climate treaty to be signed at this conference. However there is hope that some progress could...

On Wednesday, November 24, the Obama administration designated 187,157 square miles (approximately 120 million acres) in Arctic Alaska as a 'critical habitat' for polar bears threatened by disappearing sea ice due to climate change. Let us take a moment to give thanks to those who made this significant...

Soon I will tell you about five Godzilla-scale fossil-digging projects in North America that if approved will set us on a course to repeat our past with grave implications for the future of our planet. You may have already heard about some of these projects individually, but the urgency to...

Crossposted with ClimateStoryTellers.org

I recently urged young people to start a climate revolution in a post titled "Letter to Young Americans." Here are some of the comments that were posted in the blogosphere ^{1 | 2} in response to that post: "Your...

Last Sunday, after I posted my most recent blog, "Climate Educators Wanted," I visited the Green page in HuffPost. My eyes lit up. Before my eyes, the GREENscape slowly turned into a story. Stories are nothing but fragments from life put together. Here's how this story came together.