The Green Lantern is fundamentally different from those other superheroes. Superman’s power is locked in his alien biology; Tony Stark’s genius is welded into his iron suit. Their powers, talents, and machinery belong essentially to them. But Green Lantern is not a person—it is a platform. There was a Green Lantern before Hal Jordan, and […]
The photograph at the top of this column might puzzle you. Some will describe it as a slag heap. Others will joke that I photographed the Poldark scenery the wrong way round. A mining engineer might see traces of copper still waiting to be recovered; a battery executive might see lithium; an ecologist might see […]
By Ramani Narayan Special to The Digest Words are the building blocks of public trust. For a marketplace to function efficiently, the language used on packaging must carry a clear, universally understood meaning. Yet, deep within the machinery of the 2026 Farm Bill, a seemingly minor provision threatens to muddy the waters. Section 9004 in […]
The thermometer on the machine shed reads 37 degrees. Yesterday it touched seventy. Overnight, a cold front swept down from the Dakotas, leaving a skim of ice in the puddles and a hard northwest wind cutting across Tom Jensen’s fields outside York, Nebraska. The planter sits ready. The seed corn has already been delivered. Diesel […]
There was a time when those of us who knew Jim Woolsey—and had long marveled at a life carved so deeply into the granite of public service—half-believed the man might simply outlast mortality itself. Yet as we mark his passing this week at the age of eighty-four, we are brought face-to-face with a truth far […]
By Buddy Klovstad, Grand Natural Inc. Special to The Digest The renewable diesel and SAF boom has an appetite problem. Refiners are racing to lock up low-carbon-intensity feedstock, and used cooking oil (UCO) — with a carbon intensity a fraction of virgin soybean oil — sits near the top of everyone’s list. Billions in capacity […]
Rochester, New York. Winter, 1942. Harry Coover rubbed his thumb against his forefinger again. Still sticky. He frowned. The beaker refused to let go of the bench. The pipette clung stubbornly to the flask. A glass stirring rod seemed determined to remain permanently attached to whatever it had touched only moments before. Every experiment ended […]
Nineteen is an odd birthday. You’re not really a kid anymore, but you’re still a teenager. You’re old enough to vote, to sign contracts, to serve in the military, and old enough that people begin expecting you to shoulder genuine responsibilities, yet everyone—including yourself—knows you’re still growing into them. Biofuels Digest turns nineteen today, and […]
May 22, 1819, Savannah, Georgia. The sails hang limp. Captain Moses Rogers looks upward. There isn’t enough wind to carry the Savannah out into the Atlantic. For centuries, that would have settled the matter. Ships departed when the weather permitted. Cargo waited. Passengers waited. Merchants waited. Time itself belonged to the wind. Then someone below […]
How the next generation of climate technology is discovering another passage through physics That’s me, parked in Simon’s Town not far from the Cape of Good Hope, in South Africa. The tourists are watching the penguins, and I should too. Quite right, too—they are delightful little creatures, solemn, argumentative, and impeccably dressed in black and […]
