Energy & Environment

It’s not just a feeling: Power outages have become normal in the United States. Last month’s heat and derecho storms that left more than 300,000 people in the Mid-Atlantic states without power (some for as long as a week) are part of a larger trend. In 2008, according to the Eaton Blackout Tracker, there were 2,169 power outages in the U.S. affecting 25 million people. In 2011, there were more than 3,000 outages affecting 41.8 million people.
 

This has been a brutal summer. Record drought across the Midwest has forced the U.S. Department of Agriculture to slash its forecast for 2012 corn production by 12 percent. Corn prices are already 90 percent higher than in July 2010. They’ve gone above 2007-08 levels, when soaring food prices sparked riots in more than 30 countries. On July 25 the U.S. government reported that corn prices may push the cost of meat 4 percent to 5 percent higher next year.

There have been two, maybe three, landmark heat waves in the history of man-made global warming. The first was in 1988. Then as now, the eastern two-thirds of the United States was broiling while relentless drought parched soil and withered crops across the Midwest. But in Washington, the underlying problem was being named for the first time. On June 23, NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the Senate that man-made global warming had begun. The New York Times reported his remarks on Page 1, and the rest of the media at home and abroad followed suit.

The dream is always the same:

His daughter is crossing the street, holding his hand, when he hears a whistle blow—loud, mournful, insistent. Behind her, in the middle distance, he sees a train racing toward the intersection.

He tightens his grip to hurry them across. But suddenly they’re unable to move, like in the games of freeze tag he played as a boy.

Instantly, his torso drenches in sweat. He shouts to passers-by: “Help us! Stop the train!” But they ignore his cries, as if they can’t hear.

According to the 2011 census estimates, for the first since 1920—nearly a century—cities are growing more than suburbs. A recent study shows 77% of millennials want to live in the urban core. 28 year-old Denver resident, Jaclyn King said, “I will never live in the suburbs… I just like being connected to everything down here—concerts, work, restaurants, all of it.

Just months after an enormous discovery of natural gas off the coast of Israel, a local company has reported another potentially big strike -- an estimated 1.4 billion barrels of oil, in addition to more natural gas. The company, Israel Opportunity Energy Resources, says it will start drilling by the end of the year. All of a sudden, Israel has found itself a focus of the world's hydrocarbon interest.