This piece originally appeared in The Impact, 4th May, 2021 How to value a climate-normalizing technology, or enterprise? This is an vast and complex subject. One important approach is this: let’s think about how to value climate-normalizing solutions on the basis of whether they’re deployable rapidly, creating climate benefits in years, not decades. …

Originally published in The Impact, 18th May, 2021 You, surely, are interested in energy solutions that succeed as fossil fuels wind down. I know I am, along with the others at The Impact. But what of oil execs? …

Originally published in The Impact; 2nd June 2021 Change happens gradually, and then suddenly. This week, the endgame for oil companies became a lot closer and a lot more evident, suddenly, discontinuously, a jump. The world of energy is a vast part of the global economy: perhaps as much as…

It’s the day after the 2020 election as I write this. It looks as though Joe Biden will win enough states to win 270+ Electoral College votes. Let’s assume, for a moment, that legal shenanigans ensue but end with no change beyond more anger. What then? …

Nobody, lying on their deathbed, ever said: “I wish I’d attended more conferences” COVID’s not going away fast, and we must be prepared for future pandemics, and for a world with lowered use of fossil fuels. Conferences aren’t coming back in their old fashion, at all. What happens next? I…

“The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.” Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population Chapter II. Originally published 1798. The Malthusian prediction: apocalypse…

Beyond the walled garden If you’re a disgruntled user of social media, or an entrepreneur or investor seeing opportunity in the wave of disenchantment, you’re wondering if alternative social media are important, or is “just” creating more walled gardens a bad idea? Instead, do decentralized intermediaries, such as Twitter’s BlueSky, ActivityPub and Digi.me, show…

How hard, and how expensive will it be to convert most, nearly all, of the world’s energy consumption from fossil fuels to non-fossil forms? Here are a few, fresh anecdotes to show that, just perhaps, this should not be as complex, difficult or expensive as critics project. And therein lies the problem. Example one: converting ferries Washington State is moving (slowly) toward converting its ferries from burning heavy diesel oil to all-electric and hybrids. …

If you’ve graduated from a U.S. university, you get a degree and a piece of paper that includes the words: “with all the Rights, Privileges, and Honors thereunto appertaining” or some such, perhaps in Latin. …