Mike Tidwell, Director
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Mike Tidwell is founder and director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, a grassroots nonprofit organizations dedicated to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.. He is also an author and filmmaker who predicted in vivid detail the Katrina hurricane disaster in his 2003 book Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast. His newest book, focusing on Katrina and global warming, is titled The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities. Tidwell’s most recent documentary film, We Are All Smith Islanders, vividly depicts the dangers of global warming in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C.
Tidwell has been featured in numerous national media outlets including NBC's Meet the Press, NPR, the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, and the Washington Post.
In 2003, Tidwell received the Audubon Naturalist Society's prestigious Conservation Award. Two years later he received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana. A long-time resident of Maryland, Tidwell lives in Takoma Park with his wife Beth and son Sasha.
Blog Posts by Mike Tidwell, Director
By Mike Tidwell
First came the snowfall last winter. It buried Baltimore in three massive storms, shattering all accumulation records going back 127 years. Then came the thunderstorms of July and August. They pummeled much of Maryland with extreme rain and 70 mile-per-hour winds, knocking out power to over half a million customers.
The Baltimore Sun
By Mike Tidwell
With ominous global warming accelerating year after year, why can’t Maryland construct a single clean-energy wind farm within its borders? Al Gore wins a Nobel Peace Prize and Gov. O’Malley’s own blue-ribbon commission says we must get off fossil fuels very, very soon. But our state – one the most vulnerable in America to global warming and one the most politically liberal – can’t achieve even the baby step of a single commercial wind farm? What’s the problem? West Virginia has dozens of modern windmills. Pennsylvania even more.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch
By Mike Tidwell
Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has been yelling it from the rooftops for months: The best way to repair Virginia's ailing economy is to improve the state's flawed energy policies. He's absolutely right, of course, and now he faces a test. With inauguration festivities over, a landmark energy bill awaits McDonnell in the General Assembly. It would create lots of new jobs and, potentially, build badly needed bipartisanship in Richmond.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch
In the face of high gas prices, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell is right to say the commonwealth needs new offshore energy to power its ever-thirsty cars (May 5 Op/Ed, "America's energy insecurity"). The only problem is McDonnell is talking about the wrong kind of energy for the wrong kind of cars. Pushing for dangerous offshore drilling just a few miles from Virginia Beach in 2011 is the technological equivalent of building canals during the early days of railroad. Or investing in manual typewriters in, say, 1985.
by Mike Tidwell
Ten years ago, I put solar panels on my roof and began eating locally grown food. I bought an energy-efficient refrigerator that uses the power equivalent of a single light bulb. I started heating my home with a stove that burns organically fertilized corn kernels. I even restored a gas-free lawn mower for manual yardwork.
By Mike Tidwell
You can't even find your car on the street, the kids have been out of school for days, and "blizzard conditions" is now standard weatherman talk in the D.C.-Baltimore region. So if global warming is happening, why in the world are we literally buried in snow?