"Measuring Energy"
Fortune | February 2014

“In 2010 the Massachusetts Department of Transportation launched GreenDOT, an ambitious initiative to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of the state’s transportation system 40% by 2020. When he heard the news, Tim Lasker, the sustainability specialist for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), had one thought: How are we going to manage this? The first step was to review how much energy the MBTA was using for each task — but given that it was using different sources of energy (fuel oil, natural gas, electricity), how was Lasker to compare the efficiency of one to another?”

"The End of Got Milk?"
The New Yorker | February 2014

“But there has been a problem: Got Milk? didn’t actually get people to buy more milk. The daily consumption of fluid milk—as opposed to milk-based products like cheese, yogurt, and butter—has steadily declined from 0.96 cups per person in 1970 to 0.59 cups in 2011. There are lots of reasons for this. People have more drink options than ever: sodas, juices, waters, non-dairy milks, energy drinks. Milk prices have risen. Sales of cold cereal, which people often eat with milk, have fallen as people turn to quicker options like breakfast bars and Greek yogurt. Even the rebounding economy has played a part in recent years. ”

"Janet Yellen and the Fed’s Boom-and-Bust Problem"
The New Yorker | November 2013

“The Senate Banking Committee voted 14–8 on Thursday to send Janet Yellen’s nomination for Federal Reserve chair to the full Senate, putting Yellen much closer to becoming the leader of the most powerful central bank in the world.
Last week, Yellen was asked at her confirmation hearing if the Fed’s unprecedented run of accommodative monetary policies—an interest rate for banks close to zero per cent, and a monthly purchase of eighty-five billion dollars’ worth of mortgage bonds and Treasury securities—might be leading to a bubble in asset prices.”

"Why Electric Cars Have Stalled"
The New Yorker | October 2013

“Last week, a significant milestone came and went with surprisingly little fanfare: the fortieth anniversary of the day, in 1973, that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries placed an embargo on oil exports to the United States. The embargo was in response to assistance the U.S. gave Israel during the Yom Kippur War, but its effects have lasted much longer than that three-week event. In showing us that our access to oil can’t be taken for granted, it fundamentally altered our relationship with fossil fuels.”

"The Shutdown's Ripple Effects in Rural America"
The New Yorker | October 2013

“In 2003, the nonprofit organization Housing Vermont began renovating a deteriorating apartment building in the depressed manufacturing town of Springfield. The total mortgage on the newly refurbished, thirteen-unit property was thirteen thousand dollars per month, and the renters could cover only three thousand dollars of that. Rental-assistance payments from a U.S.D.A. program covered the rest.
It worked out fine until July, when Housing Vermont got a letter from the U.S.D.A.’s Rural Development office, warning that its rental-assistance program would run out of money starting in September. ”