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Hu’s Fine Is It, Anyway?

China considers fining media outlets for disaster reporting Advancing their reputation as fun-loving goofballs, Chinese officials are considering a new law that would allow local governments to fine media outlets up to $12,500 for reporting on environmental disasters and other emergencies without permission or in a way that “causes serious consequences.” Officials have been embarrassed […]

Fear and environmentalism: still more

(Third in a series; first part here, second part here.)

Fear and anger can be invigorating, even intoxicating. It's worth thinking about why.

For all too many men -- and let's face it, the vast majority of violence, personal and political, originates with men -- the strong, stoic, squinty ideal of masculinity means that whole ranges of emotional experience simply go unacknowledged, unnamed, and unprocessed.

Some boys are purposefully taught to be ashamed of any hint of vulnerability. They're taught that empathy is a sign of weakness. Their affect is actively suppressed. This comes from repressed, repressive fathers who themselves had repressed, repressive fathers, and so on back through a genealogy of domination and displacement.

More commonly, though, boys simply aren't taught or encouraged to discuss their feelings. Even well-meaning parents can buy into the myth that boys aren't as "sensitive" as girls, and of course this myth is encouraged in a thousand ways by our culture. (When I found out I was having a boy, I read a ton of material on this stuff. See, e.g., Real Boys by William Pollack.)

By commission or omission, the result is the same: emotional illiteracy.

Random thought of the day

There have been several debates here on Gristmill lately about capitalism, consumerism, communalism, corporatism, and, you know ... The System. It's worth remembering some crucial context.

Somewhere in the early 1800s, the number of human beings on earth reached a billion. In the 1920s, it reached two billion. In 1960, three billion. Four billion in 1974. Five billion in 1987. Six billion in 1999.

By around 2045, there will be nine billion people on the planet.

‘Free’ trade plus nativism equals bad food policy on both sides of the Rio Grande.

In today's Victual Reality column, I note that California's organic farms are struggling with a labor shortage.

Farmers there claim that tighter security at the Mexican border is leaving them bereft of workers; in the nation's organic fruit-and-vegetable basket, produce is rotting unpicked on the vine.

If in California there aren't enough farm hands, in Mexico, there are too many. In an excellent recent San Francisco Chronicle story, Monica Campbell and Tyche Hendricks report that, "An estimated 1.5 million agricultural jobs have been lost since Nafta went into effect in 1994." And the situation is expected to get worse as Nafta strips away what's left of the Mexican government's protection for its corn farmers by 2008.

Where do I begin to tease out the ironies at play here?

Olympic swimmer breaks own world record

Am I the only one who thinks world record titles should be reserved for people that actually have a skill? I'm not impressed by the fastest tomato ketchup drinker (Dustin Phillips) or the largest group hug (6,623 participants). And I really don't care who the most overrated celebrity is (Paris Hilton -- big surprise).

What does interest me are athletes that excel at their sport to such a degree that if they weren't videotaped, we wouldn't believe it. Athletes like Aaron Peirsol.

Wedging our carbon bets

The current issue of Scientific American -- "Energy's Future: Beyond Carbon" (sorry, full text is subscription only) -- features a series of articles on that topic by experts in the fields of energy research, transportation, ecology, and urban planning.

The first piece, "A Plan to Keep Carbon in Check," is a reader-friendly rehash of an outstanding paper by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala that originally appeared in Science in 2004. That paper, deftly summarized by Jamais Cascio of Worldchanging, presents a long-term carbon reduction strategy in the form of "stabilization wedges" -- each representing one billion tons a year of averted emissions.

A cool pie chart in the SciAm version shows 15 possible technologies, ranging from increased fuel economy to stopping deforestation, that the authors say could flatten out CO2 emissions by 2056. And Pacala and Socolow are decidedly optimistic about our ability to do this: "Holding CO2 emissions in 2056 to their present rate, without choking off economic growth, is a desirable outcome within our grasp."

California’s Million Solar Roofs bill signed into law

SB 1, California's Million Solar Roofs bill, was signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger yesterday. For those new to the story, this bill -- which some have called humankind's last, best hope for surviving global warming -- failed to pass out of the legislature three years running, until the California Public Utilities Commission enacted the meat of the measure -- $3.2 billion in rebates for one million solar roofs -- through a regulatory process last January. This bill codifies that funding into legislation, and fills in several very important missing pieces. Namely:

Tell me something

What is the thought process that leads someone to think that, at this particular moment in history, the most important thing to devote one's energy to is policing the environmental community to make sure they don't exaggerate or shade facts or use unnecessarily shrill language?

I mean, I can see calling that stuff out when you come across it. But making it your shtick?

It's as though Hitler were invading France and someone spent their time publishing pamphlets scolding Allied soldiers for their bad posture.

Hurricane director thinks coastal-dwellers are morons

The coast is no longer where it's at, if for no other reason than the potential for mega-disaster. Says Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, "as long as we continue to develop the coastline like we are, we're setting up for disaster."

He might as well be whispering into a gale-force wind for all the good it'll do. We seem determined to screw ourselves over, on this and many other counts. But good for him for speaking up.

A self-endorsed celeb fights for the planet

Tired of celebrities. Declares self one. Distributes Lester Brown's book to all. Saves world.