Author: Tristan Jones2

Tristan hails from the Piedmont region of Virginia where his parents raise lamb, eggs, produce, and poultry. He graduated from Oberlin College in 2007 with a B.A. in English and Sociology; he graduated from Columbia’s M.A. Climate and Society program in 2010. His interests range from local food systems to issues space, identity, environmental justice, development and modernity, art and design, and indigenous political critique. Outside of academia and the EI, Tristan works with the Lower East Side Ecology Center, has organized a low-income CSA in the LES, and has previously been involved in labor organizing and community gardening/market projects. In his spare time, Tristan enjoys riding and repairing bicycles, reading, playing folk instruments, local and artisanal foods, brewing beer and pickling, imagining, and voraciously consuming any new musical sound. Visit website »

Climate News Roundup — Week of 6/21

State of VA Attorney General continues climate science probe, The Charlottesville Daily Progress Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is fighting UVa’s request to end the fraud case issued against climate scientist Michael Mann. Mann, currently teaching at Penn State University, one of the scientists involved in the “climategate” controversy that erupted last winter, was an…
Climate News Roundup — Week of 6/14

Bill Gates funds cloud-whitening effort to reduce global warming. USA Today Bill Gates is funding research into whether or not it is effective and feasible to increase the albedo of atmospheric clouds by spray sea mist high into the atmosphere. The plan, spearheaded by Silicon Valley inventor Armand Neukermans, is a relatively benign method of…
Energy, Agriculture, and the Environment: Dead Zones and the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

Catastrophic, tragic, disastrous: these are all words that have been used to describe the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It is impossible to deny that these words apply – thick, goopy crude has already coated the beaches and estuaries of the Gulf, contaminating more than 120 miles of coastline. The spill is…
Climate News Roundup – Week of 6/7

10 Eastern States Join Wind Energy Consortium, Providence Business News On Tuesday a memorandum of understanding signed by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and the governors of ten states established an Atlantic offshore wind energy consortium. The goal is to promote the efficient development of wind resources on the Outer Continental Shelf from Maine…
Climate News Roundup – Week of 5/31

United States Climate Report to UN Projects 4% Emissions Rise by 2012, Associated Press (via Metronews Halifax) On Tuesday, the U.S. delivered its first emissions report to the United Nations since 2006. The projections indicate about a 4% increase in emissions between now and 2020, which includes a 1.5% rise in CO2 emissions. The emphasis…
Illuminating the Science: Art and Climate Change Part II

Last week I expressed some skepticism that art and climate science were complementary languages. I also expressed some hope that the nature of these two fields – that is, that they both are ways of better knowing the world – really were reconcilable, and could create a better robustness of understanding the natural world. I’m glad…
Illuminating the Science: Art and Climate Change

On Thursday I’ll be attending Illuminating the Science: Art and Climate Change. The event’s project is surely ambitious. It claims not only that climate data might be better communicated, or made more robust, through the arts, but that indeed “the landscape of numbers can be populated by dreams in the form of images, dance or music,…
Ideas for the Sustainable City: Green Buildings

On March 23, the Environmental Protection Agency released a list of the 40 cities with the highest percentage of energy-efficient buildings. While Los Angeles, Washington and San Francisco made the top three, NYC came in at number ten. When we think about carbon emissions, we often think of cars, trucks, factories, and power plants. We think…
Urbanization, Deforestation, Reforestation

2009 was noted as the first year that more people lived in urban spaces than in rural areas. The hope that a majority urban population would slow the clearing of tropical forests — our most effective carbon sinks — seems, however, to have been misplaced. The idea was simple: if more people moved into forested…

Climate News Roundup — Week of 6/21

State of VA Attorney General continues climate science probe, The Charlottesville Daily Progress Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is fighting UVa’s request to end the fraud case issued against climate scientist Michael Mann. Mann, currently teaching at Penn State University, one of the scientists involved in the “climategate” controversy that erupted last winter, was an…
Climate News Roundup — Week of 6/14

Bill Gates funds cloud-whitening effort to reduce global warming. USA Today Bill Gates is funding research into whether or not it is effective and feasible to increase the albedo of atmospheric clouds by spray sea mist high into the atmosphere. The plan, spearheaded by Silicon Valley inventor Armand Neukermans, is a relatively benign method of…
Energy, Agriculture, and the Environment: Dead Zones and the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

Catastrophic, tragic, disastrous: these are all words that have been used to describe the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It is impossible to deny that these words apply – thick, goopy crude has already coated the beaches and estuaries of the Gulf, contaminating more than 120 miles of coastline. The spill is…
Climate News Roundup – Week of 6/7

10 Eastern States Join Wind Energy Consortium, Providence Business News On Tuesday a memorandum of understanding signed by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and the governors of ten states established an Atlantic offshore wind energy consortium. The goal is to promote the efficient development of wind resources on the Outer Continental Shelf from Maine…
Climate News Roundup – Week of 5/31

United States Climate Report to UN Projects 4% Emissions Rise by 2012, Associated Press (via Metronews Halifax) On Tuesday, the U.S. delivered its first emissions report to the United Nations since 2006. The projections indicate about a 4% increase in emissions between now and 2020, which includes a 1.5% rise in CO2 emissions. The emphasis…
Illuminating the Science: Art and Climate Change Part II

Last week I expressed some skepticism that art and climate science were complementary languages. I also expressed some hope that the nature of these two fields – that is, that they both are ways of better knowing the world – really were reconcilable, and could create a better robustness of understanding the natural world. I’m glad…
Illuminating the Science: Art and Climate Change

On Thursday I’ll be attending Illuminating the Science: Art and Climate Change. The event’s project is surely ambitious. It claims not only that climate data might be better communicated, or made more robust, through the arts, but that indeed “the landscape of numbers can be populated by dreams in the form of images, dance or music,…
Ideas for the Sustainable City: Green Buildings

On March 23, the Environmental Protection Agency released a list of the 40 cities with the highest percentage of energy-efficient buildings. While Los Angeles, Washington and San Francisco made the top three, NYC came in at number ten. When we think about carbon emissions, we often think of cars, trucks, factories, and power plants. We think…
Urbanization, Deforestation, Reforestation

2009 was noted as the first year that more people lived in urban spaces than in rural areas. The hope that a majority urban population would slow the clearing of tropical forests — our most effective carbon sinks — seems, however, to have been misplaced. The idea was simple: if more people moved into forested…