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climate science is not a short-cut to cultural change

Roger Pielke Jr. has an important post up that I would encourage each and every enviro to read. He references this letter (PDF, registration required) in the current issue of Nature. It's from reps of several green organizations. An excerpt:

Backchat from Earth First! and ExxonMobil, and a response from Riki Ott

  Re: Climb Every Mountain. Then Remove It. Dear Editor: Thanks for runnin’ a blurb on Mountain Justice Summer on your fine website. The only thing is that the groups involved with Mountain Justice Summer, which include Katuah Earth First! and Coal River Mountain Watch, have specifically said we will not be engaging in property […]

Head and shoulders above the rest

As I was waiting for the bus this morning, I glimpsed this headline: 'Is that Dandruff in Your Air Pollution'? It's such an unsurprising concept -- that particulate matter in the air includes stuff like dandruff and fur -- that it hardly seems newsworthy. And yet. The image of all of us wading through a haze of skin chunks is somehow tough to, er, swallow. I can't help but think of all those salmon swimming through each other's lice -- and how I had the temerity, when we reported that the other day, to think it was strange.

Ecosystem services

Don't miss Joel Makower's long and informative post on recent developments around ecosystem services:

...the $33 trillion worth of "free" deliverables provided to us by a healthy planet, including fertile soil, fresh water, breathable air, pollination, habitat, soil formation, pest control, a livable climate, and a bunch of other things we generally take for granted.

He touches on the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment and a number of emerging attempts to assign economic value to ecosystem services, thereby making "externalities" into market "internalities." A great read.

Je Syracuse

Onondaga Nation sues for land rights in New York state The Onondaga Nation earlier this month filed a lawsuit claiming ownership of some 3,100 square miles of New York state, including Onondaga Lake in northwest Syracuse — a large body of water to which the community claims to have ancestral connection. That lake also happens […]

Undermined

Ruling halts proposed mine under wilderness area, for now Plans to build a massive copper and silver mine beneath Montana’s Cabinet Mountain Wilderness was successfully halted (again) yesterday when a federal judge ruled that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials put the area’s bull trout and grizzly bears at risk by approving the mine. The […]

Bycatcher in the Eye

Iconic Galapagos Islands threatened by longline fishing, other stuff The Galapagos Islands are iconic for biologists and conservationists, home to a dizzying array of rare and endangered species that inspired Charles Darwin’s seminal work on evolution. Today, the entire marine ecosystem surrounding the islands may be in jeopardy. The militant fishing unions that hold sway […]

Fossil Foolishness

As we report in Daily Grist today, Ford Motor Co. is the latest in a string of major companies looking into this whole climate-change dealio. The company is expected to announce today that they will begin researching how global warming will affect them -- or rather, how pending and future regulations will affect company business. But they won't be making any promises, said one spokesflack, about actual changes that would, oh I don't know, alter their lowest-fuel-efficiency-among-all-automakers title: "To commit to that at this point is to probably create some expectations that we might not be able to meet." Indeed.

Interestingly enough, however, is the timing of this announcement and "pledge," as tomorrow, April 1 (the Day of Fools!), is shaping up to be a major Ford-bashing day. Energy Action, a coalition of youth working toward clean energy, is organizing their second annual Fossil Fools Day. The group hopes to have thousands of participants from all over the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. involved in actions to demand clean and renewable energy.

More on the suggested actions below the fold:

Who’s getting PAYD?

The Northwest's guru on pay-as-you-drive (PAYD) auto insurance and related transportation pricing innovations is Todd Litman of the Victoria Tranport Policy Institute. He provides a useful summary of who's doing PAYD in his newsletter, which I'll simply insert below the fold. The growth of PAYD programs is very encouraging, because PAYD is among the most powerful incentives for sound transportation and land-use patterns. There are rumors that a Cascadia locale could be the next place to host a PAYD insurance offering -- more on that, if it comes to fruition.

And more framing

It occurs to me that the two points in the post below -- that framing is deeper and more important than just tweaking terminology, and that the green pursuit of Lakoff is a waste of time -- might be seen to be in conflict, so a quick clarification.

Of course greens need to be cognizant of framing. Everyone does; even in a one-on-one conversation, it is helpful to be aware of the basic frames your interlocutor is bringing to bear, so that you can actually communicate instead of passing like ships in the night. That's the thing: Lakoff has not uncovered some super-top-secret political juju heretofore only possessed by the right wing. What he's done is helped clarify common sense. All you need to be "great at framing" is some empathy and a willingness to listen. (Try it at home!) It's great that he's brought some conceptual clarity to the area, but let's not lose our knickers over the whole thing.

Yes, greens need to frame their issues better. But -- much like, say, keeping your knees bent when you play tennis -- this is not an end in itself. You wouldn't go to a knee-bending camp, and you wouldn't pay someone $350,000 to show you how to keep your knees bent. Greens should be framing their issues well as a matter of course, as they go about doing other things -- like pursuing actual goals. What's been preventing them from doing so is a fairly complicated knot of issues: media access, well-funded disinformation campaigns by the other side, structural and cultural impediments in the way the movement operates, and -- let's not pretend -- some old, outdated, fusty, or otherwise unappealing positions on issues (you can't shine shit). What hasn't prevented them from framing well is some sort of arcane mystery about how framing works, or what frames are effective. An astute, empathetic observer of culture, backed by extensive poll data and personal experience interacting with those outside her immediate social/ideological circle, already knows how to frame the issues. The thing now is just doing it.