Timothy Lesle

Selected Reporting

Dwell Magazine

Western Promises October 2008.
The design for a small village in northeastern China was meant to stand as a model for sustainable development. Instead, it proves that the pursuit of better design should never lose sight of context and culture. Forthcoming.

California Magazine

Hydrogen. What’s Not to Love? September-October 2008.
Q & A with atmospheric chemist Kristie Boering on the potential side effects of a hydrogen economy. Forthcoming.

Cradle and All. September-October 2008.
Profile of anthropologist Shannon May. When Shannon May went to China, what she expected was a a glimpse of rural life. What she found was a lesson on the pitfalls of green design.Forthcoming.

Brink Magazine

Biggest Startup Ever. May 2008.
Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia is working on a new startup. While software is hot these days, Bhatia’s new venture will be all hardware—metal, cement, asphalt—the stuf that goes into buildings and roads. Bhatia’s startup is a brand new city. In India. [PDF]

Following the Fault: Dispatches from along the East Bay’s geological time bomb. May 2008.
The Hayward Fault is the dark horse of California faults, far lesser known and, at about 45 miles in length, a mere fraction of the size of the gargantuan 800-mile San Andreas…It turns out the average interval between the last five large quakes on the Hayward fault is roughly 140 years. This October marks the 1868 quake’s 140th anniversary. [PDF]

Fall of the Wild: Photographs. May 2008.
“he fate of an oyster farm sets the local food movement against the ideal of wilderness. Article by Charlie Foster, photographs by Timothy Lesle. View photos of the Drakes Bay Oyster Farm here.

FRONTLINE/World

China: Green Dreams. A not-so-model village. 1 February 2008.
The village of Huangbaiyu in rural northeast China was supposed to be a model for energy-conscious design. The initial project was to build 400 sustainable homes, a collaboration between the U.S. architect William McDonough and the Chinese. But something went awry.
A three-part audio slideshow investigation I produced as a Frontline/World Fellow.

China: Undermined. 4 October 2007.
What began as an investigation of environmental degradation turned into a story of whole villages being literally undermined by an aggressive coal industry — and of people who faced brutal retaliation when they blew the whistle…Reported by Duane Moles, Tim Lesle, and Wu Nan. The report was also part of a 2007 student Emmy award-winning magazine program.

The New York Times Magazine

Sailing an Oil Tanker. 10 December 2006.
2006 has been a good year for the California-based company KiteShip, which makes”‘very large free-flying sails”–basically, giant traction kites that harness the wind to pull very large free-floating objects.

The San Jose Mercury News

Fresh vistas lure Bollywood to Bay Area. 5 August 2008.
This is a first trip to America for several in the Indian crew. “London was cool,” said Satish Raj, 24, an assistant director, “but California is beautiful.” Vinod Pillai, 31, an assistant director of photography, does have one complaint: “Climate is a big problem. It is cold.”

North Gate News Online

Proposition 87: Four articles on the proposed oil tax to fund alternative energy and the ensuing advertising campaign–at $155 million, the most expensive in California history. November 2006.
1) Big Money Battles Over Oil Tax.
2 November 2006, the curtain-raiser story.
“This is the first initiative I’m going to vote for in a long time. I’m going to have to violate my rule against voting for all initiatives except for the initiative that abolishes other initiatives.”

2) Oil Tax Popular in Bay Area and 3) Voters Appear to Be Rejecting New Oil Tax.
7 November 2006, the election night updates.
“It screams the self-righteousness that comes with oversimplification.”
"Gas prices are the ultimate pocketbook issue."
4) Californians Reject Oil Tax, but Observers Think the Issue Will Resurface.
8 November 2006, the wrap-up.
"Prop 87 had the right end but the wrong means.”

Angelides Reaches out to Chinese-American Voters. 26 October 2006.
Angelides visited the Sweet Mart on Washington Street as part of his handshake tour of local merchants. Owner Daniel Lo, 52, seemed surprised by the visit. After Angelides left, he laughed and said, “They help us, we help them.”

Death of San Leandro Woman Remains a Mystery. 21 October 2006.
Sonia Ilustre wanted to establish a neighborhood watch program.

Residents Cope as Violence Swirls Around Them. 16 October 2006.
When Markel Abram walks in his West Oakland neighborhood, his 6-foot-9-inch frame is hard to miss. He gets a steady stream of shouts and honking horns. People are saying hello.

San Francisco Considers Foot Patrols to Beat Crime. 2 October 2006.
“There’s no reason why people need to be dying in one of the most sophisticated cities on the planet.”

Tenderloin Fights Gritty Image. 21 September 2006.
The veteran actor Martin Landau recently walked the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood wearing a rumpled brown trench coat, a carefully creased fedora, and a look of exasperation.

Bonus: Supervisors Oppose No-Match Immigration Measures. 12 September 2006.
“We’re not required to check immigrant status. And we like it that way.”

The Planet

Making a Just Transition. September/October 2006.
“We’ve been running so fast chasing the American Dream because that’s what the rest of the world tells us that we want and need."

Hot or Not? Climatologist Stephen Schneider on how industry has manufactured ‘uncertainty.’ September/October 2005.
"In political reporting, where there is no standard of who is right or wrong because you’re reporting on philosophy, you give roughly equal weight to these two sides and you let them duke it out. When you apply that model to science, you end up in the cacophonous disaster we have now. Because in science, there aren’t two sides."

Witnessing the World Through Words: Poet Robert Hass on Poetry and Nature. July/August 2005.
"I think that the old formula of the civil rights and anti-war movements—which was pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will—seems to me really necessary right now."

Thinking Big and Small: Designing the Next Industrial Revolution. An interview with William McDonough. July/August 2005.
"Set the goal as being relatively simple. Our goals start with a tone poem, which is that we love all the children of all species for all time. And we think that there is no end game. What we’re looking for is the infinite game—the game we get to play forever."

Getting Somewhere on the ‘Bridges to Nowhere.’ January/February 2006.
In August, Alaska Representative Don Young bragged that he stuffed the 2005 federal transportation bill ‘like a turkey,’ with billions of dollars of spending, including two proposed bridges in Alaska.

Building Environmental Community One Canyon at a Time. January/February 2006.
When you see what you stand to lose, then you learn to love it. If we’d never had to fight to protect this place, a lot fewer people would even know about it.

States Take Lead on Mercury, Global Warming. July/August 2006.
“Minnesota is the ‘Land of 10,000 Lakes.’ You basically don’t find a body of water in Minnesota that doesn’t have mercury contamination in the fish.”

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science

From Space Travel to Social Justice: An Interview with Freeman Dyson. Fall 2001.
"This Orion Project was a crazy idea. I think it could have worked, technically. It would have covered the globe with radioactivity, so that wasn’t such a good idea. And I could see that from the start, that this problem with radioactive fallout would be the showstopper in the end. It wouldn’t fly because of the fallout problem. But still, apart from that, it was a great idea." [PDF only]

Ecology and Education: David Orr. Fall 2001.
“The problem with contemporary education,” Orr says, “is that there is a disorder in thought, which leads to a disorder in development.”[PDF only]

In Memoriam: Half Zantop. Spring 2001.
As we drove on the highway from Fresnillo to Zacatecas, Half Zantop turned to me and recited a poem. It was the first stanza to Rainer Rilke’s “Der Panther.” He carried those words with him for half a century, the verse memorized during his days in grade school. The lines, as he spoke them in German, were invested with a rhythm and quiet intensity that, in the imperfect realm of memory, perfectly complemented the sunlight reflected upon the dry Mexican countryside. [PDF only]

Ernest Fox Nichols: Dartmouth’s Scientist President. Spring 2000
An experimental physicist during some of the formative years of modern physics, Nichols’ talent would take him from a modest upbringing in the Kansas of the Old West to the universities and institutions of the Northeast and Europe, with a couple of stops at Dartmouth along the way. [PDF only]