Would you like to know how many people have visited this page? Or how reputable the author is? Simply
sign up for a Advocate premium membership and you'll automatically see this data on every article. Plus a lot more, too.
 SHARE 
|
|
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.
OpEd News Member for 534 week(s) and 2 day(s)
189 Articles, 8 Quick Links, 27 Comments, 2 Diaries, 2 Series, 0 Polls
List By Popularity
Page 1 of 10 First Last Back Next 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 View All
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.
Thursday, December 19, 2024It's just before midnight--and I need skills To locate humanity's place in the world, the late David Brower, father of the modern environmental movement, called the Earth's four and a half billion years a six-day week, with each day representing about 750 million years.
Thursday, December 5, 2024Skillset #2 for A Brave New World: Know Your Bioregion Inspired by the 1981 Bioregional Quiz developed by Leonard Charles, Jim Dodge, Lynn Milliman and Victoria Stockley 1. From where you read this quiz, which way is north?
Wednesday, November 27, 2024Skill #1 for a Brave New World landscape and the natural world. Looking ahead, we see a need to reform the relationship""but find it hard to know just how we might alter our direction, shift our momentum, adjust our speed. We seek a more careful "meshing" of social and natural systems, but we have no sure map to guide us. ""Conservation biologist Curt Meine, "Inherit the Grid," 1997
Friday, November 1, 2024Before, during and after Election '24 If a candidate you don't respect wins, could you name one benefit to their winning?
Friday, October 18, 2024Inspiration & Education Check out Julia Barnes' extraordinary watercolors of marine creatures. The Canadian filmmaker's documentaries are The Sea of Life and Bright Green Lies.
Thursday, October 10, 2024A recipe for respecting nature and technology's limits-- and another for exploiting them 1. Abide by Herman Daly's principles: Do not take from Earth faster than it can replenish, and do not waste faster than Earth can absorb the waste.
Sunday, September 8, 2024The Great Salt Lake is Disappearing. So, Utah Banned the Rights of Nature. A guest essay by Will Falk For 11,000 years, The Great Salt Lake and its wetlands have provided habitat for hundreds of species. Today, more than 40 million people in the U.S. and Canada depend on the Lake's water. Nearly 350 bird species-- totaling more than 10 million migratory birds-- depend on this ecosystem for food like brine flies and brine shrimp.
Sunday, September 8, 2024Fire hazards at the battery storage system coming near you On Friday, August 30, Applied Energy Services Corporation (AES), a global utility and power-generation company, submitted a proposal to Santa Fe, New Mexico county commissioners to build a 700-acre solar facility with a battery energy-storage system (BESS).
Wednesday, September 4, 202421 questions for solar PV explorers Today's post is inspired by Bill McKibben's speaking in Santa Fe for the second time in less than a year. In 2023, he advised people not to be a "NIMBY" when corporations propose installing large-scale solar or wind facilities. Alas. I've still got questions about these systems...
Sunday, September 1, 2024Three questions for Israelis and U.S. Americans (weapon-suppliers): Do you know the Jewish law that forbids warriors from trapping an enemy--because trapping endangers the trap-maker?
Saturday, August 31, 2024A Strategy of Peace President Kennedy's extraordinary June 10, 1963 Speech at American University.
Thursday, August 22, 2024Calming behavior in children with autism and ADD: a free, EMR-reduction protocol In 2006, a two-year-old with delayed speech, high-pitched screaming and anxious behavior visited California pediatrician Dr. Toril Jelter's office with his parents.
Saturday, August 17, 2024A wild idea, a bitter remedy Most of us don't know what's involved in manufacturing smartphones, solar panels, cars, appliances or TVs. We don't know about the water, energy, extractions or shipping. We don't know about the smelters or child labor or slave labor. The Internet makes us think that everything we want is within reach.
Monday, August 12, 2024What my world needs now I just heard about another digital situation that I have no idea how to handle. A college instructor read a student's final paper, found it "a word salad" and ran it through the school's AI-content detector. Content detectors take note if writing shifts abruptly from one idea to another without much connection. They notice changes in tone-- say from formal to casual.
Monday, August 5, 2024If we depend on water As Millan observed, harm to water cycles can make land "incapable of supporting the region's climate." Of course, manufacturing anything (i.e., cement and transistors-- or refining ores) requires vast amounts of water that are returned to waterways"toxic.
Thursday, August 1, 2024Please, I need to do my own housekeeping I might say I need housekeeping like some people need meditation. This Samsung commercial for an AI that will keep your house in order therefore baffles me. Who would want a robot to take care of them?
Tuesday, July 23, 2024Who defines "sustainable?" Decades ago, the late ecological economist Herman Daly named two rules for creating sustainability: Don't take from the Earth faster than it can replenish; and don't waste faster than it can absorb.
Page 1 of 10 First Last Back Next 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 View All
