NYTimes – Big special section, “Energy”
Perhaps it is just me. For years I have jet-propelled myself happily through fat stories about how civilization gets and will continue to get fuel, electricity, and other energy for our machines and buildings. Lately the news of political paralysis, and projections with a lot of plotted lines leading to untenable futures, makes reading about energy prospects into more of a chore.
Today in the New York Times a big section on Energy has on its front page just two stories, each noting the dramatic continuing growth in American use of coal and exemplified by a monster, vertically-integrated power plant under construction atop a coal deposit in Illinois, written by Matthew Wald, and of natural gas and Canadian gasoline, by Clifford Krauss. Little in the latter on frakking’s downsides, just a lot on how much gas the US has, and how much oil sands Canada has. Wald brings up global warming in the lede, but only to provide a contrasting frame for the story’s theme. A few years ago, even in in a business-oriented section like this one, the lead stories likely would have been on alternative energy sources ( brilliantly highlighted under the long-running banner of The Energy Challenge). The section was no ad magnet, either. It has just three – two full-pagers from oil companies, and a small ad from Columbia University for its sustainable management training program. The section seems so …. last mid-century.
New alternative energy, other than discouraging words from Wald in his coal piece about prospects for carbon sequestration, is tucked in the back in a little feature on solar in Davis, California by Todd Woody, and another by him on desert tortoises’ fates in the burgeoning solar farms of California’s deserts.
This section is not crusading journalism, with hardly a word one might regards as preachy or scolding to be found. It is descriptive journalism, period. It is about what is. Objectivism comes to mind. Nonetheless, technophiles and science fans might find, among stories on nukes and pipelines, diversion. Included is an update from Henry Fountain on worries that solar storms could cripple electricity delivery with damage that would take many months and scads of dollars to repair, and one from Tom Zeller on prospects for a lot more diesel cars as alternatives to hybrids and electrics.
It’d be nice to find a more optimistic section. This one seems merely realistic about what is most likely.
- Charlie Petit
