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Ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s just better than knowing

It's well known in environmental advocacy that people can easily be overwhelmed by problems. They wind up feeling paralyzed rather than motivated. I've always treated this as a theoretical point about communications, but I've had to admit that I'm an example. Here's how.

Mountain Equipment Co-op, (aka "the REI of Canada"), just pulled from shelves a batch of polycarbonate plastics, including those ubiquitous Nalgene bottles. According to an article in the Globe and Mail:

Candidates reveal their priorities

The difficulty with assessing candidates by how they address climate change is that policy statements and tailored speeches give little insight into the relative importance each candidate places on global warming as compared to other issues. It is particularly difficult to distinguish between Democratic candidates, who employ an almost identical language of urgency when addressing environmentalists.

Tom Harkin, senior Senator from Iowa, hosts an annual barbecue. The September 16 event drew six major Democratic candidates -- Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson -- who spoke between 8-15 minutes each to an attentive crowd of 12,000. Each candidate's speech is displayed in the accompanying chart (below the fold) in the form of a bar, with red indicators of when and for how long climate change was addressed (CNN feed available at YouTube). It should be noted that when the issue was raised, the Harkin Steak Fry crowd responded enthusiastically, so there is little reason to think that candidates trimmed their climate sails for this particular venue.

Confronting the belligerent U.S. delegation at the 2007 climate talks

A friend of mine is in Bali with the youth activist group SustainUS, and sent this video update:

(Thanks, Lauren.)

Check out the body language on the guy who I presume is the U.S. delegate to the talks, as the SustainUS group asks him to take a leading role in the talks to ensure a better future for the planet. Unfortunately, he pretty well embodies the word "obstructionist."

Whales on treadmills and dolphin harassment

New Zealand installed its first acoustic fish fence, designed to herd salmon smolt in the right direction during migration ...

... Polish fishermen who obeyed a ban on cod will receive up to $11,000 in revenue lost, but those who defied the ban will face fines up to $7,500 ...

... salmon returns for the year in Vancouver were called "dismal" ...

... for the first time, scientists were able to estimate how much a fin whale can swallow in one lunge for krill, finding that they engulf 2,900 cubic feet in a single gulp -- the equivalent of the volume of a school bus. Measuring the amount is tricky, said one scientist, because "you can't get whales to run on a treadmill in a laboratory" ...

Friday music blogging: Bruce Springsteen

People in my, ahem, age cohort were first exposed to Bruce Springsteen via his 1984 album Born in the USA, which came out when I was 12. As a result, for most of my formative years I thought of Springsteen as a bland “adult contemporary” VH1 rocker along the lines of, I don’t know, Tom […]

Sweden best at addressing climate change, U.S. and Saudi Arabia worst, says report

You might want to sit down for this: A new report from a German environmental group says that Sweden does the most to address climate change, while the U.S. and Saudi Arabia do the least. Shocking, we know. The U.S. dropped two places from its fourth-worst position last year, while Sweden stayed up top for […]

Thumbs down for Toyota, GM, Ford, Washington Post

The Washington Post had an article yesterday on the House fuel economy deal that is quite good in doling out cheers and jeers -- good except for two sentences. Let's start with the cheers.

The article quotes NRDC rightly praising Pelosi for being steadfast with the Senate's 35 mpg target and Dingell, too, for:

... telling the automakers a year ago that they were going to have to accept a mileage improvement. He bargained hard for trying to make it less, but he deserves credit for coming around and agreeing.

The article also has fascinating back story on how Japanese car manufacturer Nissan "struck out on its own to lobby Capitol Hill for fuel standards that were in some ways stricter than what other automakers wanted." A Nissan Sr. VP "said the company decided early to advocate tough fuel-economy standards as part of a company-wide effort to become more eco-friendly."

Ungreen GM and Ford worked hard to kill a 35-mpg deal, and so did supposedly green Toyota. Google "Toyota greenwash" to see how people feel about this. [Note to Toyota: Why not have lobbying consistent with your eco-branding?]

So what are the two sentences that get the Post a thumbs down?

Simple answers

Noel Sheppard: Capitalist democracies around the world should be very concerned about the level of socialism being discussed at the United Nations’ climate change meeting in Bali. Not only are international hands being extended to collect funds from countries like the United States in order to help poorer nations deal with a problem that might […]

Fish less now to boost profits later, says study

The less fish there are, the more expensive it is to catch them — so if overfished marine stocks were given time to regenerate, fisherfolk would end up making a lot more money down the line, says a new study in Science. So to solve the problem of overfishing, all we have to do is […]

From Bono to Booty

And … action! Costner’s not too merry about Sherwood’s fate, Bono’s building a skyscraper with or without you, Gore gets animated for Futurama, Jacko goes eco, and Guns N’ Roses wants you to Slash energy use. And that’s just this week; next week, Hollywood Goes Green. Photo: James Devaney / WireImage.com I can’t stop this […]