Elizabeth Kolbert: Field Notes From A Catastrophe

Elizabeth Kolbert's vivid, intimate accounts of climate change through the eyes of people in the Netherlands, Iceland, and Alaska were initially published in the New Yorker Magazine and later compiled in the book Field Notes from a Catastrophe. Since "Field Notes" was first published, Kolbert has written a stunning piece on ocean acidification, and has profiled one-time boy wonder of the environmental movement Amory Lovins, now 49 years old and still the eternal optimist.
PART ONE (11 min) PART TWO (7 min)

"One of Amory's basic points is that if you don't use energy, you've found a new energy source. A barrel of oil we don't use, is a barrel of oil found, in a way. If we just made cars more efficient, we would basically found the equivalent of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves right under Detroit."

Here Kolbert shares her thoughts on all that she's investigated and reported, not only on climate change but on the political and social climate of climate change. She's one of the most valuable chroniclers of Our time on Earth, and we were thrilled to have her in our Green Street studio.

Comments

[danny]

fyi to Ms Kolbert

from danny bloom Alaska reporter, in Taiwan

[new] Planning for future polar cities now

great interview, and the reasons why people are not doing much NOW is
a very good answer. One thing nobody seems to be talking about, David
and Elizabth, is Lovelock's proposal about the need to start THINKING
about building and planning polar cities NOW, since we might need them
in the year 2500 or soon. See my blog info here:
http://climatechange3000.blogspot.com
i feel we should be planning, even constructing these polar buildings,
underground, NOW. Before it is too late. But as Elizabth says, people
cannot act on this, the future is too far away. But look, it's coming
closer every day. As we get in our cars and turn on the CO2 spigot
again and again.....

Shouldn't governments and the UN be talking about planning polar
cities NOW, for the remnants of humanity to ride out the coming global
winter, and then, later, repopulate the Earth? Why the silence on
this?