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Really shameless plugging

Turns out CSPAN2 will be carrying our Climate & Culture panel live on Thursday at 12:30 pm EDT. Tune in or watch it here. It's not Vanity Fair, but it's a start ...

A bipolar solar disorder

Last night, Nova tackled an interesting, less-discussed danger from pollution: global dimming. It hasn't gotten that much attention (outside of Grist, of course) but Nova presented a very compelling and rather harrowing picture.

Basically, while the earth has been getting warmer due to greenhouse gases, it has simultaneously been getting cooler due to a layer SP50 sunblock made up of smog particles in the air. As a result, the globe is like a guy who drinks fifty cups of coffee a day and then pops five Valium and proudly declares he's "in the zone."

It's easy to imagine how the distraction faction would use this to cast doubt on the whole idea of global warming. "What's with these egghead scientists? Is the globe getting warmer or colder? Make up your mind!" Well, we know it's getting warmer. So here's the scary part: the dimming of the sun has been masking the full effect of global warming, which may be much further along than we previously realized. We've been reducing the particulate smog that causes dimming for the past few years, and we're starting to see an accelerated shift. Once this guy gets off the Valium, he's going to be on one hellish caffeine kick.

An eco-pentathlon puts students to work on Earth Day

As your Outlook/Blackberry/secretary administrative professional has no doubt alerted you, Saturday is Earth Day: a celebration of all things green and, um, earthly? A celebration not lost on the youth of today. And since lists of the best ways to help the planet on Earth Day are all the rage these days -- hell, even Vanity Fair's green issue has one -- I've decided to compile one of my own.

Or rather, I'm reprinting one put forth by the University of Montana - Missoula. And this isn't just any list of five things you can do to help the planet. This is an eco-pentathlon! I'm serious! It appears to be a tradition at the school. A series of service events are set up at various locations on or near the campus on Earth Day, and eco-pentathletes ride their bikes from one event to the next, working about an hour at each.

Here's the line-up for Saturday's events:

• 9 a.m. - noon: Help clean up the Clark Fork River.
• 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.: Work on prairie restoration at Mt. Sentinel.
• 1-2:30 p.m.: Dumpster dive and sort recyclables.
• Noon - 4 p.m.: Build a bike at the Festival of Cycles.
• 2 p.m. - 5 p.m.: Do farm chores (make compost, plant trees) at the PEAS farm.

Whew! What a (Earth) day!

Know of any other cool Earth Day related events happening at a campus near you? Post 'em in comments!

Gas prices

Since everybody else on the planet is commenting on the issue, I suppose I should as well:

No, high gas prices are not the result of oil-company price gouging or nefariousness. It's the market balancing supply and demand (i.e., you, dear consumer).

Yes, politicians -- mostly Democrats -- attempting to substitute oil-company bashing and demagoguery in the place of real energy proposals deserve only snorts of derision.

No, it would not be a good thing for gas to be cheaper. It's been artificially cheap in the U.S. for a long time, but it's inevitably going to rise. Get used to it.

That is all.

Green roof of doom

Wal-Mart is building a store inside Chicago city limits with a 67,000 square foot green roof. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart's plants do not absorb rainwater or prevent runoff. They only emit eeeevil. You've been warned.

(via TH)

Global warming wedding-crashers?

I was thinking a bit more about a point David raised yesterday: While it's dandy that groups outside the fold of the mainstream environmental movement, from sportsmen to evangelicals, are expressing concern about global warming, how do we know wily conservatives won't be able to dance their way out of ambitious and necessary reforms with toothless rhetoric, more industry subsidies, and "fake solutions"?

It's a hugely important question, and I won't pretend to have a crystal ball in my cubicle. But I strongly believe it's a question that greens and progressives must find a way to answer -- otherwise our best-laid plans and proposals will remain just that.

The Bush administration has mastered the art of Orwellian naming ("Healthy Forests," etc.) and bait-and-switch rhetoric (we're "addicted to oil" -- let's reshuffle research budgets without committing to advancing the ball). That we know. The question is: How's the sales job going? Better or worse than last year, or four years ago?

Fools Rush In

Melting Arctic leads to black-gold rush A quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves may lie beneath the Arctic Ocean. For centuries they’ve been stuck under a thick layer of ice, but luckily, the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet and all that bothersome ice is melting! […]

Environmentalism is dead? Long live environmentalism.

Thanks to David Roberts for highlighting an article in the current Washington Monthly, "The Emerging Environmental Majority" (by yours truly).

Here's the quick version: Each time in American history that environmental concerns rose to the top of the national agenda, support for ambitious government action came from a broad array of groups responding to an impending sense of crisis.

Having spoken to activists, historians, and politicians of the 1960s and 1970s, I believe there are parallels between today's mounting public concern over global warming and the prelude to our nation's last great era of environmental reform. In the decade before "Earth Day," city-based citizen groups across America worked to control pollution, union chapters focused on mining safety, sportsmen's groups worried about watersheds, and women's organizations highlighted the connection between pollutants and fetal health. These groups had diverse focuses, but the broad chorus for reform made green concerns impossible to ignore. In the early 1970s, Washington produced the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act, among other landmark laws.

Today public concern about global warming is approaching another tipping point. Climate-change campaigns are taking root among a widening spectrum of groups, from environmentalists to evangelicals, hunters to insurance companies, farmers to politicians. For ambitious measures to pass muster in Washington, global warming has to be seen, not as an issue for partisans, but as an issue affecting everyone.

Now, my original point was that David is one smart cookie (don't you agree?), and he raises some pertinent questions that I take a whirl at answering below.

NYT on environmental programming

Tonight, PBS will be airing "Nova: Dimming the Sun" and "Journey to Planet Earth: The State of the Planet's Wildlife." (Check local listings.)

Over in the television section of The New York Times you'll find a review of these two shows, as well as HBO's "Too Hot Not to Handle" that Dave wrote about here.

When television is such a mathematical word problem, it hurts the idle brain. But idling is exactly the problem, and three nationwide Cassandra cries dominate this week's public-affairs programming, with urgent calls for action. "Journey to Planet Earth: The State of the Planet's Wildlife," being shown tonight on PBS, explains the increasingly inhospitable outlook for all earthly creatures. The "Nova" report "Dimming the Sun," also on PBS tonight, complicates matters with the latest findings about how pollution has masked the effects of global warming. And on Saturday HBO declares the whole climate-change crisis "Too Hot Not to Handle."

If you watch any of these, feel free to write your own review here.

An emerging environmental majority?

Christina Larson — who occasionally contributes to this very blog — has an important piece in Washington Monthly called "The Emerging Environmental Majority." While it’s a great article and an important contribution to the discussion about where environmentalism’s heading, I think a couple of crucial points are, at the very least, tenuous, and deserve further […]