I have an architect friend who knows a great deal about American cars. He is interested in racing and auto craft, and specifically, designing for performance. Naturally, he laments the demise of the American automotive industry. He asked me why it happened and what will follow. Here’s what I told him. Detroit’s crackup is no […]

What will our energy future look like? Of course, I have no special insights, but I see two interesting trends. Here’s the first. In large, complex economies, meaningful energy transitions occur gradually across many decades. Vaclav Smil, from the University of Manitoba, offers these compelling observations. In most of the world’s developed economies it took […]

I find the smell of roasting pork a great and powerful magnet. A neighbor and his family were recently roasting half a hog for a graduation party, and I was pulled forcefully toward it. The hog was cooking on a remarkable machine, surely the finest barbeque I’ve seen. It was made one winter by the […]

Over millennia, plants and animals have adapted to changing climates by migrating to more favorable locales. If the climate continues to change in a manner consistent with current expectations, most warming will occur in the high latitudes. In order for plants and animals to adapt, large areas of habitat, especially those along north-south gradients, must […]

Religion was central to my early work in political economy. I lived among the Hutterite Brethren in the late 1960s, visiting and staying with two-dozen Hutterite colonies in the Northern Plains. My goal was to explain what conditions enabled a communist society to survive, and in their case even thrive. This fieldwork occasionally involved driving […]

“Things Counterintuitive” is the theme of FREE’s first summer conference. We have invited a select group of economists, mathematicians, free-range intellectuals, and a magician to explore interesting and important counterintuitive truths about nature and human behavior. Much human behavior is given by nature, immune to pious pronouncements. It is irresponsibly naïve to ignore this reality. […]

I’m just back from Western Michigan after giving a series of talks on our energy future. In the 19th century, Dutch immigrants settled much of this area, bringing with them an affinity for windmills. There is an authentic windmill named De Zwaan, meaning graceful bird, in the town of Holland. When the local utility proposed […]

What accounts for Detroit’s failure to produce a commercially viable electric car? When I discuss this question with students, I sometimes get conspiracy theories. They cite the 2006 documentary film “Who killed the electric car.” The film attributes the demise of GM’s all-electric car, the EV-1, to collusion among the carmakers, the government, and oil […]

I intend this column to be helpful advice to women. It’s about a sad subject, the plight of pine trees in our urban, suburban, and rural landscape and the casualties that follow. Mountain pine beetles have hit our trees. These creatures attack most pines, particularly ponderosa, lodgepole, and Scotch; trees we treasure around our homes […]

Although today we must report to the IRS, there are solid reasons to be optimistic about our future. Many people find the positive cultural and environmental qualities of our valley, and indeed our region, compellingly attractive. Despite obvious current setbacks, our situation is enviable on multiple dimensions. Most importantly, accomplished, highly successfully people find Bozeman […]