Agenda for a Shrinking Planet

A discussion of personal choices and public policy options that address the population boom and resource crash we face in the next 30 years, with an emphasis on what you can do in your life today. [Delivered as a talk at the True Nature Country Fair in Barnardsville, North Carolina, Sept. 26, 2009] – Cecil [...]

Sierra Club endorses Cecil

The Sierra Club has just joined the Asheville Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Asheville Fire Fighters Association (AFFA) in endorsing Cecil in the race for Asheville City Council.

The science behind my campaign platform

“We need to rethink our transportation and agricultural systems, our city planning and water and sewer …. So many of those things have been designed for the climate of the past 100 years and not for the climate we’ll see in the next 100 years.”
—Jane Lubchenco, a Harvard-trained marine ecologist and new chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

White roofs

Now that our federal government has decided to rejoin the “reality-based community” (as a Bush administration flack disparagingly referred to those of us who prefer fact to flim-flam), we are hearing straight talk about climate change. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu dropped in to visit with the most trusted reporter in America, Jon Stewart, and mentioned [...]

Energy challenge

I’ve been thinking about my recent post Keeping Down With The Joneses, in which I report on a project that uses our innate inclination to be “normal” to shape conservation habits.

Keeping down with the Joneses

I’m always on the lookout for non-coercive ways to encourage resource conservation and I’ve just learned about a doozie. Psychological research into what motivates people to save has made great strides, in, of all places, hotel rooms. Hotel guests have become familiar with cards that encourage re-use of towels, or that suggest not asking for [...]

The filing speech video

A new spirit of patriotism: my filing speech

I delivered this speech on the steps of the Buncombe County Board of Elections after filing as a candidate for Asheville City Council, on Monday, June 6.
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I have just filed as a candidate for a seat on the Asheville City Council. I do so in part as an answer to President Barack Obama’s call for a new spirit of patriotism. It is also partly my answer to the first presidential speech I can remember hearing as a child, when another young president suggested we not ask what our country could do for us, but to ask what we could do for our country.

[photo by Edwin Shelton]

Looking at the numbers – are we past “Peak Car”?

I’ve been looking at statistics from the U.S. Department of Transportation and it appears that we may have passed the point of peak automobile use in this country. [to read more, click on the header]

Big wheels keep on turnin’- some thoughts on transportation

We all learn in school about the invention of the wheel about 7,000 years ago, originally used for throwing clay pots and later turned sideways for use in transportation. Wagons, chariots, carts and wheelbarrows were invented in the next few millennia, though widespread use of wheels didn’t emerge until the invention and construction of smooth roads. Later we invented engines to move the wheels on bigger and better roads, developed cheap fuel and personal vehicles, and then all headed out on the highways—until, as Cat Stevens put it, “They just go on and on ’til it seems that you can’t get off.” … [click on the header to read more]