Kirk Johnson is the chief curator and vice president for Research and Collections at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. He is a fossil-leaf specialist best known for his research on the global extinctions that happened 66 million years ago when a 6-mile asteroid struck what is now the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico.
He is the author, with artist Ray Troll, of Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway: An Epoch Tale of an Artist and a Scientist on the Ultimate 5,000-Mile Paleo Road Trip, which won the Colorado Book Award for best nonfiction in 2007.

In November of 2005, I gave a lecture about the relevance of paleoclimate
to modern global warming to an audience of nearly 1,000 oil and gas geologists
in Calgary. I had innocently assumed that their geologic knowledge
would predispose them to understand the significance of climate change. My
assumption was not correct. I was startled by the number of attendees who,
with their questions, rejected the idea that human activity had anything to
do with global warming. Many of them strongly objected to the methodology
of using mathematical climate models to predict future climate trends.
The pairing of paleoclimate records with climate models creates a smooth
framework from the past through the present to the future that allows the
creation of testable hypotheses about climate processes. This is solid science
with tremendous potential, yet several of the questioners responded to it
with dogmatic denial. I had clearly misjudged my audience and it made me
want to understand what was going on that would cause such an emotional
response to a series of scientific observations and predictions.

Susan Moran is a freelance journalist who writes for The New York Times, The Economist, and other publications. She is currently on a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Excerpt:

“… I’m struck by the fact that Sayles, fifty-two, is as much an entrepreneur as an ordinary farmer. Or that “ordinary” farming looks a lot less ordinary as guys like Sayles scramble to keep the farms, and the towns they reside in, afloat by diversifying their income streams. Sayles, for example, is launching wind, biomass, and other ventures, and he is organizing farmers in the community to negotiate a lucrative contract with a large wind-farm developer that’s been scoping out the area. If necessity is the mother of invention, then
the people who work the land might be the ones to help us figure out how to save it. Just don’t go calling Sayles a tree hugger.

Sayles is among a small but growing subset of farmers and ranchers who are becoming part of the climate-change solution. Many of them are driven more by a desire to save the farm than save the planet. Some of them are generating renewable energy in the form of cooperative wind farms or biofuels production. Others, like Sayles, have entered carbon-trading markets, such as the voluntary Chicago Climate Exchange, as carbon-offset providers, as they’re called in industry parlance. In essence, they are reducing or sequestering carbon dioxide in the soil through practices and technologies such as conservation tillage and methane digesters—a way to capture this superpotent greenhouse gas on dairy farms. Still other farmers are planting forests or native grasslands where they had grown crops. The climate exchange, as well as other regional carbon-offset programs, are gaining appeal among farmers from Georgia to Oregon. …”

Florence Williams is a contributing editor at Outside Magazine. She also frequently writes on science and the environment for the New York Times, OnEarth, High Country News and other publications. A former Ted Scripps Fellow at the University of Colorado, she lives in Colorado with her family.

Veterans Green Jobs was the brainchild of Brett KenCairn, a Wyomingbred community organizer who worked to retrain loggers in the Pacific Northwest after the spotted-owl controversy and then worked with Native Americans on sustainable-forestry projects in Arizona and New Mexico. Now based in Boulder, he saw linking veterans and green jobs as solving two big problems: underemployed vets and an existing workforce too small to tackle global warming. “If we don’t figure out how to mobilize a new workforce at a dramatic scale, our chances of averting climate change are virtually nil,” says KenCairn, who never fought a war but whose father served in Vietnam. “We need to retrofit every building in our built environment. Veterans represent one of the best workforce assets because they’re already
ready for rapid training and deployment.”

…..  Both Reppenhagen and KenCairn expect the military may just be the bridge America needs to popularize the green economy. “The link to average Americans is missing right now,” says Reppenhagen. It’s one thing to want to be a hippie in Boulder and hug a tree; it’s a whole other level to be a veteran and say, ‘Hey I’m coming home from [a] war fighting for oil.’ I think the culture clash could be decreased by realizing there’s something seriously patriotic about energy independence.”

Josh Radoff is cofounder and principal of YRG sustainability, based in Boulder, Colorado. He is a regular speaker on sustainability issues and has consulted on hundreds of sustainability projects at the intersection of the energy, climate, and green-building fields, both nationally and internationally.

Excerpt:

“… there is also a trend toward more explicitly recognizing the interlinking
nature of both our problems and our priorities and goals. If, for
example, we recognize that we are healthier and happier if we have access to
natural landscape and daylight, if we eat fresh, nutrient-rich non-processed
foods, if we exercise, if we can walk to get around, if we have access to
quiet places, if we get out of our cars, then we start to see our building and
development projects very differently. Development, after all, is literally the
“bringing about of potential or possibilities.” With this in mind, it makes us
ask the question, what is the potential of this piece of land, this urban infill
site, this building, this community? And then the follow-up question, why
are we doing this and what do we hope to achieve?

Some in the green-building industry have started to ask this question
about their projects. Their clients tell them they want an office building.
They ask why. Because they want a place to house their workforce. Why?
Because they want a place where everyone can come together and be productive
in getting their work done. Because they want to develop a community
where people are aligned with the goals of the company and are
inclined to stay there. Because they want people to be healthy and feel good
about coming to work. Because they know if their people are happy, then
they will have a good chance of being successful in their endeavors in the
long term, all of which would make them happier too.

So what they need is not an office building, but a place that can create
community and wellness, foster creativity and productivity, and bring out
the best potential of their people and their company. This changes quite a
bit in how we think about the project. It’s no longer a building. It’s a vehicle
for something else entirely.”

Laura Pritchett is the author/editor of five books. Her fiction includes the novel Sky Bridge, which won the WILLA Fiction Award, and the short story collection Hell’s Bottom, Colorado, which won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize and the PEN USA Award. She is also the editor/coeditor of three anthologies: The Pulse of the River, Home Land, and Going Green: True Tales from Gleaners, Scavengers, and Dumpster Divers. Pritchett has published over seventy essays and short stories in numerous magazines. She lives in northern Colorado, near the ranch where she was raised.

Excerpt (in which Pritchett describes the sorting process that follows the delivery of dumpster treasure to the waste processing facility):

“…Finally, the workers are done: we have 108 pounds of cans (that’s about
3,215 of those babies), 400 pounds of scrap aluminum, 10 pounds of clean
and dirty copper, 174 pounds of radiators (aluminum/copper mixed), 116
pounds of insulated wire, 26 pounds of number-one single wire, 25 pounds
of soft lead, 23 pounds of stainless steel, 30 pounds of yellow brass, and a
bunch of batteries.

Assuming that the aluminum would be produced by a coal-fired power
system, we have saved 18,000 pounds (9 tons) of carbon dioxide from being
released into the air. That’s 56 million BTUs. Add to that the copper—about
175 pounds—which saves another 10 million BTUs (and an additional 3,000
pounds of carbon dioxide from being emitted). And we’re just talking about
the aluminum and copper here; we’re not even talking about how much
earth would have been stripped, processed, and laid waste in a tailings pile
left to further pollute.

On top of this, my kids are holding their first $100 dollar bill, which
they’re looking at with reverence and awe. Compared to their lemonade
stands, this diving business is the better deal.”

Michael L. Beatty is chairman of Beatty & Wozniak, PC, a thirty-five-attorney law firm headquartered in Denver, Colorado, and dedicated exclusively to the energy industry. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School, Beatty currently serves as a director of two publicly traded energy companies. Beatty served as chief of staff to Colorado governor Roy Romer, and was chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party.

Excerpt:

Green energy policy has now taken on the same moral connotation as
homeownership. America has made a moral choice for affordable, abundant,
carbon-free energy and doesn’t want to hear dissent. Unfortunately, turning
the energy debate into a moral issue instead of a policy discussion is
destructive and keeps us from exercising prudent judgment. Fossil fuels can
represent the values of either George Bailey or Henry Potter. Fossil fuels have
enabled America to become the most powerful nation in the world, given us
the highest standard of living, enabled our agricultural industry to feed the
world, and saved us from destruction at the hands of the Kaiser, Tojo, and
Hitler. Coal, oil, and natural gas continue to provide steady, dependable, and
affordable energy for our nation’s homes, commerce, and industry. Likewise,
we can argue that fossil fuels are not only destroying the planet, but also
dehumanizing humanity. These “fuels from hell” and their greedy sponsors
have bankrupted our nation, increased our trade imbalance, fueled Middle
East terrorism, funded the Taliban, exploited labor, created monopolies, and
precipitated every ill from the Ludlow Massacre to 9/11.

After more than a century of being cheap, plentiful, and ignored, fossil
fuels are either the root cause of every problem or the foundation for every
solution. Fossil fuels heat our political rhetoric as well as our homes and
fuel partisanship as effectively as automobiles. Nowhere is the fight more
acrimonious than Colorado. Our plentiful natural-gas resources and strong
environmental ethic have caused a bitter fight with no middle ground. Making
energy policy a moral choice has polarized the vocabulary such that
reasoned discussion is now impossible.

For the great majority of citizens, the contradictory claims create paralysis,
typified by the shopper who drove her car home to get Whole Foods
cloth bags because she was unwilling to choose between paper or plastic.
We need to have a serious discussion about energy policy and we need to
make hard choices, but we also need to start that discussion with a clear
understanding of the facts and a willingness to be rational.

Diane Carman is director of communications at the School of Public Affairs, the University of Colorado Denver. She is a former columnist for the Denver Post.

excerpt:

“Dad wore his clothes until the pants were shiny and his shoes until they
could no longer be resoled, and I never saw a no-deposit, no-return beer
bottle in the house until after the old man died.
If anybody had measured his carbon footprint, it would have been a
fraction of mine, as I pursue the life of a twenty-first-century carbon-calculating
eco-consumer in earnest. While the eco-consumer of my dad’s era
was defined by what he didn’t buy—which was essentially anything that
wasn’t absolutely necessary—subsequent generations have embraced the
philosophy that almost any challenge can be met by hypervigilant shopping.
Now, I may not be as nuts as my friends who insist they won’t drink
anything but organically grown coffee prepared in the world’s only solarpowered
coffee roaster—Pueblo, Colorado’s, Solar Roast Coffee—but I’ll
admit I’m a sucker for product with a green pedigree.”

James R. (Randy) Udall developed Colorado’s first solar-energy incentive program, the world’s first renewable-energy mitigation program, and some of the most progressive green-power purchasing programs in the country. Udall is co-founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas–USA and writes from Carbondale, Colorado.

Excerpt:

… Everyone wants to hear the story of Samso. In 1997, Denmark held a
contest to select an island that would eventually be run entirely on renewable
energy. Samso won. In the decade since, the islanders have invested $70
million of their savings and government grants in wind turbines, district
heating plants, solar panels, and biofuels. Today, they are energy independent.
Their carbon footprint is not just small, it is negative, since they produce
more energy than they consume.
Reporters who visit the island sometimes describe its farmers as “beefy.”
Like farmers everywhere, those on Samso occasionally have difficulty finding
wives. This led them to create a website called farmerdating.dk. The
personals are in Danish, but a typical one reads: “Beefy farmer with large
tractor seeks attractive woman with boat. Must be able to sew and clean fish.
Send picture of boat and motor.”

Hillary Rosner has written for The New York Times, Mother Jones, Men’s Journal, Popular Science, Seed, Audubon, High Country News, Slate, Grist, and many other publications, and she is the coauthor of the book Go Green, Live Rich. She also contributed to Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth. She holds a master of science in environmental studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she studied on a National Science Foundation fellowship.

She wrote an essay for the book (which also appeared in expanded version in High Country News) about the impact of extensive pine forest beetle kill on the human population  of Grand County, Colorado.  Widespread beetle kill throughout forests in the rocky mountain west has been attributed, in part, to global warming, as the prolonged winter freezes that have kept beetle larvae populations in check in the past have not taken place in recent years.

Excerpt:

“… Not all the beetles have wrought is bad. Allergy sufferers are breathing easier thanks to less pine pollen in the air. Sales of chain saws and related
merchandise—chains, chaps, hard hats—are up. Free firewood is everywhere. People have learned to revere healthy forests in a way they didn’t
before—and are figuring out how to better manage them. But then there are the daily nuisances: fallen trees blocking roads, basements
flooding from increased soil moisture, finger-pointing among neighbors over whose property lines the beetles crossed. Concern is rising over
impacts on the recreation industry that’s an integral part of the county’s economy. “If you have a choice between a green forest and a dead forest,
where would you build your million-dollar resort?” mused Ron Cousineau, district forester for the Colorado State Forest Service’s Granby district.
“Things are going to become a lot more difficult to do out in the woods,” said Nelson, whose town economy could be hit if hikers, bikers, and hunters
choose greener pastures for their outings. Property owners like Charles Henry have been wondering about this too. “Are people going to want to
come hike when all the trails are blocked or there’s danger of getting killed by a falling tree?” Henry asked. …”

Editor Beth Conover will be reading from and signing How the West Was Warmed on Saturday 11/14 at 2pm at the Tattered Cover lodo

Here’s a link:

file:///Users/Beth/Desktop/Conover%20HWW%20event%20flier.pdf