In early October, a small asteroid, about the size of a VW bug, impacted Earth coming in over Sudan. It was very special. This sort of event happens every several months on average, so just why was this one...
POSTED Wednesday, November 26, 2008

I remember the excitement and hope that accompanied JFK into the White House. This is the first time in half a century that I sense the same excitement. When I look at the racial situation in the US during...
POSTED Friday, November 14, 2008

Right now, I am in Basel, Switzerland, keynoting the Swiss Innovation Forum, so I have witnessed firsthand the European reaction to Obama’s victory. The European response has been ecstatic. People spontaneously organized many election parties to watch the election...
POSTED Thursday, November 13, 2008

Barack Obama’s election is the single most historic moment I have personally lived through. It’s not just a historic American moment — it seems like most of the planet is cheering at America now. Seeing how much of a...
POSTED Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The election is upon us, and we all look forward to it being over. Both presidential candidates have stated their positions with regard to science, e.g., in response to Science Debate 2008, not always with equal clarity. Many thoughtful...
POSTED Monday, November 3, 2008

Conventional wisdom says that foreign policy does not determine the winner in US Presidential elections. Particularly not when domestic economic anxieties are high — and that kind of anxiety has probably never been higher in several generations. Still —...
POSTED Monday, October 27, 2008

Much has been made of rising aspirations of the middle class in developing countries, with the implication that this must mean literally hundreds of millions of cars — and hundreds of millions of tonnes of oil use and a...
POSTED Wednesday, October 22, 2008

What happens when one size fits all becomes one size fits none? If you’re trying on a pair of stretch pants, it’s an awkward sartorial moment. When you’re talking about the education of our children, however, it’s a disaster...
POSTED Monday, October 20, 2008

For many of us, the gateway drug toward a lifetime of experimentation with world-saving endeavors was food. With so many points of personal relevance — from health concerns to the pleasures of taste to the simple fact of its...
POSTED Wednesday, October 15, 2008

If you want to save the world, you have only so much money, time and attention. So the question is - what effort should you throw yourself into that provides the biggest bang for the buck? The Copenhagen Consensus...
POSTED Monday, September 29, 2008

When the world seems to be falling down all around us, can we afford to spend our time thinking about the future? In the midst of ongoing wars, accelerating economic collapse, and cascading environmental ruin, it’s easy to dismiss...
POSTED Friday, September 26, 2008

One of my proudest moments as an environmentalist came when the Santa Monica Main Public Library answered my plea to install more bike racks. The racks were hard won: I photo-documented then blogged about the over-crowded racks at the...
POSTED Thursday, September 18, 2008

Little things can have a surprising impact. Take global warming. Increasingly, we’re being asked to think about our “carbon footprint,” the amount of greenhouse gas produced to do the things we do: emissions from our cars, emissions from the...
POSTED Wednesday, September 10, 2008

I think saving the world is important, but so far the world — at least as represented by the wealthy and the powerful in the less wealthy countries — seems to show no need to be saved. The wealthy...
POSTED Wednesday, August 27, 2008

How you can save the world, or more precisely, what I can do to save the world, has driven me full time for the past 7 years. As a former astronaut, sometime scientist, and dogged good public policy pusher,...
POSTED Monday, August 25, 2008

“Think globally, act locally” is a well-known approach to enabling change in the deep structure of our society. Perhaps the ultimate local action is what food we choose to place into our bodies. While deciding on a personal diet...
POSTED Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Consider this scenario. Your doctor feels a small lump in your gut. You ask her what to do next. And this is what she says: “There is a test we can order to determine if this lump is an...
POSTED Wednesday, August 13, 2008

I love transparency, and I wish I believed it could save the world all by itself. Transparency, of course, is the opposite of opacity, secrets, anonymity… all those affordances that can hide bad behavior, foster bribery and corruption, and...
POSTED Monday, August 11, 2008

On May 2, 2008, Cyclone Nargis touched down on Burma’s western coast, and – according to top U.S. diplomats – may have claimed the lives of 100,000 people. As Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science has...
POSTED Wednesday, August 6, 2008