Numbers Don't Lie

Both in the United States and in the European Union, buildings account for about 40 percent of total primary energy consumption

It would be a lot easier to expand our use of solar and wind energy if we had better ways to store the large quantities of electricity we’d need to cover gaps in the flow of that energy.

the four pillars of modern civilization—ammonia, steel, cement, and plastics—which

For every dollar invested in vaccination, $16 is expected to be saved in healthcare costs and the lost wages and lost productivity caused by illness and death.

by shifting the split to 40, 50, and 10 percent, we could (thanks to grain feed saved by reducing inefficient beef production) produce easily 30 percent more chicken meat and 20 percent more pork, while more than halving beef’s environmental burden—and still supplying at least 10 percent more meat.

What rarely gets reported is what actually goes into constructing these national scores: GDP per capita, social support (determined by asking if, when in trouble, people have relatives or friends to count on), healthy life expectancy (taken from the World Health Organization’s assessment of 100 different health factors), freedom to make life choice

Heating and air conditioning account for half of residential consumption, which is why the single best thing we could do for the energy budget is to keep the heat

But solar and wind electricity generation are now mature industries, and new capacities can be added quickly—increasing the pace of decarbonizing the electricity supply. In contrast, several key economic sectors depend heavily on fossil fuels and we do not have any non-carbon alternatives that could replace them rapidly and on the requisite massive