Articles by Erik Hoffner

New mockumentary on climate science, dialogue, and societal change is opening soon

Filmmaker Randy Olson has just completed Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, a hilarious new mockumentary thickly peopled with real life climate scientists, activists, skeptics, and a rollicking plot-line that could bring a lot more people into the global warming tent. I found it refreshing and a good follow-up to the Gore movie, because it's not so much about the scientists or the celebrities telling us why we should care. Instead, it's fun, watchable, and about real people and what they think about this issue.

Watch the trailer here. Tickets for the L.A. premiere go on sale next Monday.

Rail and the coming changes in transport

National Train Day was marked this year on May 10, so it's not too incredibly late to mention two new books of note: John Stilgoe's Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States Landscape that came out in the fall says that rail is "an economic and cultural tsunami about to transform the United States." Maybe that's a little grand, but rail is definitely on the ascendancy, since it can move people and freight at a fraction of the energy usage vs. petroleum.

Also, Radio Ecoshock's March 28 edition of its useful weekly podcast had a recording (skip to minute 11 for the presentation) by authors Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl at the launch event for their new book Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil. They are forecasting a grid-tied and electrified (increasingly from renewables) rail system among four revolutions coming in transport:

Early appearances of climate change in popular literature

Last week, I picked up a copy of the newly reissued 1971 Ursula Le Guin classic The Lathe of Heaven, which takes place in dystopic, post-collapse Portland, Ore., circa 2002 or so. It's typical brilliance from Le Guin, of whom I can't read enough, but I was interested to see that the novel begins by describing Mt. Hood devoid of snow due to the greenhouse effect. The climate is entirely different from that of the 1960s, with blue skies a thing of the past and rainfall patterns completely shifted.

It's the earliest "popular literature" mention of global warming I've come across. Le Guin is often way ahead of her time (she invented Harry Potter and Hogwarts in 1968's A Wizard of Earthsea, for example), though perhaps there are earlier instances of authors adding climate change to the collective body of literature.

Does the bank have a legitimate role in solving the climate crisis?

The World Bank, which once upon a time wanted to rid the world of poverty, is now trying to position itself as climate crisis savior -- but at the same time is continuing its fossilized ways. So says EarthBeat Radio -- check out their illuminating podcast on it. Janet Redman, the author of a report entitled "The World Bank: Climate Profiteer," is interviewed about a $2 billion portfolio of carbon offsets for industries in the global north to be developed in the global south. Sadly, the Bank program suffers from a lack of transparency, benefits dirty industries most, and puts the alleviation of poverty at the bottom of its list of priorities. Doesn't sound like a world of change.