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A five part journey to protect the oceans
Mother Jones just launched a unique website that highlights the threats facing our oceans. What's noteworthy about the site is that it doesn't focus on the work of one organization, but rather highlights the best of the best of what a multitude of nonprofits are doing to conserve our oceans. Oceana's mercury pollution work, Greenpeace's pirate fishing work, and World Wildlife Fund's polar bear work all live in perfect harmony. It's refreshing to find journalists that are more interested in the big picture than playing favorites. Check it out.
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If a tree falls in a desert …
Speaking of desertification, we learn of this depressing story via Boing Boing:
The Ténéré wastelands of northeastern Niger were once populated by a forest of trees. By the 20th century, desertification had wiped out all but one solitary acacia. The Tree of Ténéré, as it came to be called, had no companions for 400 km in every direction. Its roots reached nearly 40 m deep into the sand. In 1973, the tree was knocked over by a drunken Libyan truck driver. It has been replaced by a simple metal sculpture.
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Global warming and the courts
We all know about climate skeptics getting funding from corporate entities with an interest in preventing the U.S. from taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But did you know they are influencing the courts as well? Check out Eric Schaeffer's piece from Sunday's Washington Post to learn the sad truth.
And to learn more about the case in question and why the Supreme Court should take it up, read this piece (PDF) by two smart lawyers, Jennifer Bradley and Timothy J. Dowling, at the Community Rights Counsel.
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Americans and Climate Change: Setting goals I
"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.
Today we get into one of the biggest and meatiest chapters, about the process and substance of setting concrete goals for fighting global warming. A variety of strategic concerns, and psychological and institutional impediments, are discussed. There are great insights aplenty. I'll start today with the brief intro.
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Immigration scuffles threaten wildlands along the U.S.-Mexico border
In the three-way struggle between the U.S. Border Patrol, illegal border crossers, and the natural environment, it’s never clear who’s winning. A U.S. Border Patrol truck on the move near Douglas, Ariz. Photo: Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. If you ask the Border Patrol, they will tell you they apprehended nearly 1.2 million illegal crossers in […]
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Register now for Global Green’s New Orleans Sustainable Design Competition
Go register for Global Green's New Orleans Sustainable Design Competition. Seriously. Go now! Would you register if Brad Pitt asked you? Well, I can pull some strings and make that happen. Ha ha. No, not really. Seems Pitt has joined up with Global Green of his own accord. (Apparently he's very much into architecture these days. Is sustainable design the new Black? Man, I'm good.)
Perhaps what's holding you back is that you don't know anything about the competition besides the fact that Brad Pitt is involved? (Hello, what more do you need to know?) Well, read on, my friend.
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The Great Pall of China
Despite cleanup efforts, China’s environment just keeps getting worse China’s efforts toward environmental protection in the last five years have … how do we say this nicely? … totally flopped. The country’s economy is growing about 10 percent annually, but with pollution reduction targets based on an economic growth rate of 7.5 percent, the environment […]
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Can you strip-mine in scuba gear?
There's a problem with reading too much science fiction while trying to be an environmentalist, and it's this: I know the idea of mining the ocean floor for precious metals is likely to be environmentally destructive. All the same, I can't help but get a bit of wide-eyed nerd-glee at the idea of underwater mines. It's right up there with flying cars and rocket packs, in a way. Or maybe that's just me.
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More rightie attacks on Gore
It was to be expected that An Inconvenient Truth would face attacks from the right. I expected those attacks to mirror the ones that swarmed around Fahrenheit 911: tiny kernels of fact, or at least alleged, debatable fact, surrounded by clouds of bilious harumphing and chest-beating.
The principal goal of such attacks is not to discredit the facts in the movie; it is to create the impression that the facts have been discredited. The goal is to create a piece of conventional wisdom: the movie is full of lies and exaggerations. As we all know, conventional wisdom requires very little anchor in reality. It just requires repetition.
All that's needed for these kinds of slime campaigns is one critique that holds up, or at least one that can't be immediately and decisively shot down. Once that one critique is in place, all the other bloviators in the right media world can simply take it as accepted fact that the movie's been discredited, dispense with factual arguments altogether, and get straight to the bilious harumphing.
But this strategy depends on that one critique. Gregg Easterbrook's attack on the AIT was an attempt to serve that role, but it got demolished by Media Matters within days. Jason Steort's attack on the movie -- the National Review cover story -- was another, but it got demolished by ThinkProgress, several times over.
As a consequence, the latest attacks don't yet have conventional wisdom to draw on. They are, as a consequence, woefully confused and vapid. They wander through a fog of stale stereotypes about environmentalists, and about Gore, and scarcely brush up against the movie itself.
Two quick examples:
