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Would You Drive an Extra Five Minutes to Save the Planet?

All my life, I thought there was just one way to get to my hometown’s ShopRite: right on Fair Street, right on Gleneida Avenue, right into the parking lot. That was until I plugged ShopRite into Google Maps. Now I had two options.

03/08/2023

Can High-Tech Buoys Ease California’s Water Crisis?

This article was originally published in Hakai Magazine. In May 2022, California officials unanimously rejected a plan to build a $1.4 billion desalination plant in Huntington Beach. The plant, the officials said, would produce costly water and…

08/07/2023

The Dawn of an Auto-Captioned World

Automated live captions used to be terrible. But they’re becoming transformative for people who can’t hear.

28/05/2023

A Slice of ‘Bacon’ Made Me Believe in Fake Meat

Last month, at a dining table in a sunny New York City hotel suite, I found myself thrown completely off guard by a strip of fake bacon. I was there to taste a new kind of plant-based meat, which, like most Americans, I’ve tried before but never…

23/02/2023

Don’t Let Crypto Bros Undermine Effective Altruism

The swift downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried brings unnecessary suspicion on a valuable form of philanthropy.

17/11/2022

A Plan to Cool Off the Hottest Neighborhoods

“Grandma, is the air on?” Kisha Skipper was worried. She’s the vice president of the Yonkers NAACP and a member of the Climate Safe Yonkers Task Force, a group that’s planning projects to make the city safer in a hotter world.

26/10/2022

Computers May Have Cracked the Code to Diagnosing Sepsis

Where doctors struggle to diagnose a condition that kills more Americans than stroke, machine learning could help.

16/10/2022

When Does the Clean-Energy Infinity Loop Start?

Digging up minerals for rechargeable batteries has a high initial cost, but eventually those minerals can be recycled indefinitely.

13/07/2022

The Future of Mud

A Senegalese architecture firm is championing a lower-tech material than concrete to help cities prepare for climate change.

05/07/2022

Does Wealth Rob the Brain of Compassion?

Paul Piff just landed on Park Place. I own it. “Shit,” he says. I also own three railroads, a couple of high-rent monopolies, and a smattering of random properties. Piff is low on cash. He’s toast. We’re playing Monopoly on a sunny pre-pandemic…

04/04/2021

Stockton’s Basic-Income Experiment Pays Off

Two years ago, the city of Stockton, California, did something remarkable: It brought back welfare. Using donated funds, the industrial city on the edge of the Bay Area tech economy launched a small demonstration program, sending payments of $500 a…

03/03/2021

Get a Heat Pump

If you’re like me, you know that getting rid of your car is one of the best things you can do for the climate, and also that you will never do it. This is a car-oriented country, and a car-oriented time.

26/02/2021