Attention Holiday shoppers – my latest book is now available. It’s a short paperback – makes a lovely stocking stuffer and gift for friends, family, and colleagues: = = https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hydrofracking-alex-prudhomme/1114814073?ean=9780199311255 = Overview: Constantly in the news and the subject of much public debate, fracking, as it is known for short, is one of the most promising yet controversial methods of extracting natural gas and oil. Today, 90 percent of natural gas wells use fracking. Though highly effective, the process-which fractures rock with pressurized fluid-has been criticized for polluting land, air, and water, and endangering human health. A timely addition to…

Interesting Talk piece in this week’s NYer. Here’s the teaser   HAZARD DEPT. UNDERFOOT BY ANDREW MARANTZNOVEMBER 25, 2013 On a recent Saturday morning, Corey Johnson sat in a downtown café trying to persuade his neighbors that hydrofracking isn’t an issue that just concerns people in the boonies. Johnson, who is thirty-one, was recently elected to replace Christine Quinn as the City Council member from the Third District, which includes Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea, and the West Village. He was spreading the word about a brand-new pipeline that pumps fracked gas directly into the West Village. . . . To read the full story you…

Joe Nocera of the NYT has been pro fracking for quite awhile, but today he admits that methane leakage is the “achilles heel” of the industry. A thoughtful piece … OP-ED COLUMNIST Fracking’s Achilles’ Heel By JOE NOCERA Published: November 18, 2013 It’s not very often that someone starts his career as a geologist and then winds up as governor, but John Hickenlooper, the governor of Colorado, can make that claim. “We had fracking when I was a working geologist in 1981,” he told me on Monday. “It was very primitive. What really changed the world is when we got horizontal drilling.…

I’ll be talking about my new book at the following venues this week and next — I hope you’ll join me: 10/28 — Seattle: 7:30 PM, Town Hall (1119 8th Ave, Seattle WA, 98101) 10/29 — San Francisco: 7 PM, The World Affairs Council of Northern CA, auditorium (312 Sutter St, SF, CA, 94108) 10/30 — Denver: 7:30 PM, Tattered Cover LoDo (1628 16th St, Denver, CO, 80202) 11/4 — Chicago: 6 PM, International House, U of Chicago Assembly Hall 11/5 — LIttle Rock: 6 PM, Univ of Ark, Clinton School of Public Service (1414 E. 59th St)

It only took 40 years to build, its the largest capital project in NYC history, and few are aware of it, but at long last Tunnel Three is flowing.  Without it, the city might have gone dry — in part because tunnels 1 and 2 are so old that they risk collapse. A few years ago I was granted the rare opportunity to travel 600 feet underground and explore the tunnel as it was being built.  As I write in THE RIPPLE EFFECT, it was a fantastic experience, and I felt as if I’d been transported to another planet.  The…

On this day in 1961, Mastering the ARt of French Cooking was published by Knopf (after nine years of work, rejections, etc). It remains in print today.  For the full story of the making of that book, read “My Life in France,” which I penned with Julia. Brain Pickings takes a look back: A Lesson in Entrepreneurship, Perseverance and Publishing from Iconic Chef Julia Child by Maria Popova “Don’t for the love of heaven let anybody rush you into anything.” On March 8, 1952, Julia Child, who would have celebrated her 100th birthday today, sat down at her kitchen table in Paris…

Nantes, France, is the European Green Capital of 2013, and my kind of city: “the transport hierarchy has been flipped around. Seventy-five percent of the street is devoted to spacious rights-of-way for bus rapid transit … Drivers yield to pedestrians, and those on foot boldly step into crosswalks. Parking spaces have been minimized … Residents and visitors hop on nearly 1,000 bike-share bicycles at over a hundred stations, navigating via hundreds of kilometers of bike paths.” No wonder they call it the Portland of France. A good piece from my pal Anthony Flint:   For Second-Tier European Cities, It’s a Race…