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Katie Singer writes about nature and technology in Letters to Greta. She spoke about the Internet's footprint in 2018, at the United Nations' Forum on Science, Technology & Innovation, and, in 2019, on a panel with the climatologist Dr. James Hansen. Her most recent book is An Electronic Silent Spring. www.DearGreta.com and www.ElectronicSilentSpring.com.
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Thursday, September 4, 2025Educating ourselves as if life depends on nature While another school year begins, I look for teachers and students exploring how to live within their bioregion's offerings by the fuel, food, water and ores provided within their watershed.
Wednesday, August 20, 2025Returning to Small In Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered, E.F. Schumachers 1973 book, he explained that the owner of a utility does not matter nearly as much as its size. Seven years later, in Human Scale, Kirkpatrick Sale advocated for human endeavors at scales we can comprehend.
Saturday, August 16, 2025A.I. and You In his Substack, A.I. is tearing through the fabric of everything that actually means something to us, Alistair Alexander shared his neighbor Monika Jiang's question, What is your relationship to A.I.?
Thursday, July 31, 2025Never Again Moss Landing: The battery fire that should change the world--and could affect people living nearby Within a few days, 80% of Vistra's approximately 4.5 million batteries went up in smoke.
Thursday, July 17, 2025Who will win the water: computers or living creatures? Have you noticed that electronics manufacturers, telecom access networks and data storage centers can't survive without water?
Saturday, June 21, 2025BEWARE of ChatGPT: Like Every Technology, Using It Has Consequences If awareness can improve decisions, then here's helpful information: MIT researchers studied 54 ChatGPT users over four months, and found that using an A.I. assistant to "write" an essay can cause brain atrophy: Like unused muscles...
Friday, June 6, 2025Opening for Respectful Discussion of Solar PVs and Other Complex Technologies Today, people commonly believe that technology improves our communications, solves all manner of medical and ecological problems, and keeps our environment "green and clean".
Thursday, May 22, 2025I Don't Want It But I Need It: A.I. Literacy "Grace" called me last week. In a clear, kind voice, she welcomed me to my new health insurance plan. Then she let me know she's an automated messenger.
Friday, May 2, 2025Expanded thinking expands our world Climate change is not our root problem. Like pollution, wildlife habitat loss and weakening public health, climate change is a consequence of overshoot.
Saturday, April 19, 2025Inspired to depend less on international supply chains, more on community When Trump began announcing tariffs on imported goods, I wondered if consumers would notice the perilous nature of depending on international supply chains.
Thursday, April 3, 2025Can I keep within my ecological means when I need a new computer? Honestly, no. While I pondered what living within my ecological and financial means would look like, my email provider cut me off: my 2011 computer is no longer compatible with updated infrastructure. Is it possible to have a computer and live within my ecological means?
Friday, March 21, 2025Call me poor, call me rich If you want a sustainable society, a friend once explained, aim to meet the needs of the poor. As it is, our society's basic needs systems serve the wealthy. I challenged myself to define "poor" and "rich"""and discovered I fall into every category.
Tuesday, March 11, 2025Call Me a Localist While radical, daily policy changes make the whole world precarious, I wonder how to keep healthy and survive""how to sleep well every night, have a good bowel movement every day and keep peace between my ears. As much as possible, I figure we've got to keep local.
Tuesday, March 4, 2025Remembering Arthur Firstenberg: May 28, 1950 - February 25, 2025 For nearly 50 years, Arthur Firstenberg lived with awareness of technology's harms. May he rest in peace.
Friday, February 21, 2025A Tale of Two Counties & Two Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) On January 16, 2025, Vistra Corporation's battery energy storage system (with a 4,000-megawatt-hour capacity, possibly the world's largest BESS) in Moss Landing, California, 70 miles from San Francisco, caught fire for the fourth time in three years. This time, eighty percent of the system's lithium-ion batteries went up in toxic smoke.
Friday, February 14, 2025Images from the techno-sphere In his recent substack, "The Cost of a Battery," Max Wilbert posted Frank Forencich's Spring, 2021 photograph of Thacker Pass, Nevada-- and an "after mining" image that Forencich created with photoshop.
Tuesday, February 4, 2025Questions for commissioners voting on a proposed battery-energy storage system (BESS) To reduce fossil-fuel use, corporations now commonly propose installing large-scale solar PV or wind facilities with backup battery-energy storage (BESS). Corporations call these facilities "green", "clean", "sustainable", "renewable" and/or "zero-emitting". These are marketing terms.
Monday, January 20, 2025Questioning lithium-ion batteries, fire risks & hydrating dry regions While finishing this Substack, I learned about the explosive fire that started January 16, 2025 at Moss Landing, California's Vistra Power Plant, the world's largest battery energy storage facility, housing tens of thousands of lithium-ion batteries.
Thursday, January 9, 2025What the world needs now is directions for reducing our dependence on technology Last month, Geoffrey Hinton, godfather of artificial intelligence (A.I.), winner of the 2024 Noble Prize in physics, warned that there's now a 10% to 20% risk of A.I. wiping out humanity within 30 years.
Friday, December 27, 2024The Whole Elephant: The Best of 2024 When I read about households or communities that claim to reduce their ecological footprint by using solar PVs, industrial wind turbines, batteries and/or e-vehicles, I fret and sigh. Calling these technologies "green" is like weighing an elephant by the tip of its tail.
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