Per Capita Davis: The world needs to reflect resilience, redundancy and cooperative governance
Eventually, on this planet of increasing population and not inexhaustible resources, the issue of sustainability will take center stage. We talk about it now, but my guess is that not too far in the future the discussion will take on a more serious and urgent…
Per Capita Davis: Here’s some believe-it-or-not climate news
For your light reading, items from various news sources, some of which appear believable and serious, others not so much: Cambridge, Mass., home to Harvard University, has adopted an ordinance to require the placement of stickers warning of the climate emergency on fuel pumps at…
Per Capita Davis: What does it mean to be sustainable?
Reading the morning news, I came across an article about viruses. In 1992, a bunch of scientists were at a meeting convened by NASA to discuss the possibility that life exists on planets other than Earth and how they should go about looking for it….
Per Capita Davis: What a week this was
What a week that was, and I don’t mean about what was happening in Washington, though I guess that also factors in. I’m talking about the avalanche of news reports coming out about car companies and their plans for the future. Friday, Jan. 29, the…
Per Capita Davis: We have arrived at a reckoning
The word “reckoning” can be used in more than one way. It can be defined as “the action or process of calculating or estimating something,” as in “I reckon that boat won’t float.” For my purposes with this column, it can also be defined as,…
Per Capita Davis: A little light on the subject
Light, such a wonderful word, meaning both that which illuminates and as a measure of weight. I’ve been feeling both recently. Jan. 20 feels like a special day, a “light at the end of the tunnel” day, and a description of what feels like a…
Per Capita Davis: Are co-ops a model for going forward?
There was a lot of conversation last year about what we might learn from the pandemic, and specifically how what we learn might inform our approach to dealing with the climate crisis. A lot of this discussion focused on which industries and technologies should be…
Per Capita: Is it ‘here we go’ or is it ‘here we go again’?
I admit to becoming somewhat cynical about news reports of countries pledging to take real, substantive actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but, in the spirit of the season, and also admitting to a slightly dormant but unquenchable hope, I’m letting Lucy line up the…
Per Capita Davis: Nonprofits need our help
The work of building a more resilient and less dangerous world post pandemic will focus on, among other things, the “environment” a singe word that encompasses an enormous number and range of areas of policy and programs. Many hands, one might even say “all hands…
Per Capita Davis: What does ‘urgent’ look like?
Warnings about potential adverse effects of what was heretofore known as “climate change” began long ago, but even if we stick a pin in the year 1990 (see below), there was always the semi-comforting tagline to news reports to the effect of, “if we act…
Per Capita Davis: Fork in the road
Today, as I write this, is Nov. 2. When The Enterprise prints it, and you read it, it will be Nov. 4. Between now and then is Nov. 3, a day of great consequence for the climate crisis. I’m not sure how to characterize the…
Per Capita Davis: Reimagining the railroads
Back in 2016, Bill McKibben wrote the foreword for a book, the principal author of which is Bill Moyers, titled “Solutionary Rail — A people-powered campaign to electrify America’s railroads and open corridors to a clean energy future.” My neighbor across the street, a train…
Per Capita Davis: When innovation goes off the rails
For some time now the columns I’ve been writing were born out of the urgent discussion that started in the spring over how we earthlings will move forward from the pandemic. Would we learn anything from our experience about the value of and need for…
Per Capita Davis: More about hydrogen
The prior column was about hydrogen, specifically hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles, but there wasn’t room, only 900 words, to talk about both the obstacles hydrogen faces and also some of the potentially positive developments for the future of hydrogen as a fuel. So, this…
Per Capita Davis: Whatever happened with hydrogen?
Every few years or so there seems to be a renewed excitement about the potential for using hydrogen as a non-fossil fuel. Usually, the conversation is about cars. Once you get it into a car’s fuel tank, it can power the car without producing any…
Per Capita Davis: Innovating for the future
I’ve been searching high and low for innovations that could help power a more energy-efficient and sustainable future. There’s a lot out there, some very much closer to being a concept than an actual product or process. Still, the sheer number of ideas being pursued…
Per Capita: To the moon and back
Whether technology can save us from the climate crisis is an open question. It seems relatively certain that improvements in technology will inevitably at least help reduce carbon emissions, or maybe even capture some of them from the atmosphere, but hoping for or anticipating a…
Per Capita Davis: Speaking for the trees
Planting massive numbers of trees as a strategy to combat the climate crisis can be said to have its roots (groan) in a program begun in Africa but which has grown (groan) into a global effort involving governments and organizations all over the world. According…
Per Capita Davis: What’s the cost of silence?
Not too long ago it was fashionable for those who deny or doubt the climate crisis to argue that although scientists had early on predicted that one of the first visible effects of increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would be increases in extreme weather…
Per Capita Davis: We’re in a senior moment
Today, as this column is being written (June 1), is the official opening of a hurricane season that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has estimated will be quite active. It comes, as scientists have predicted and proved, that increasing heat stored in the oceans…
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