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A review

For a few days after reading The Upside of Down, I annoyed most of my friends and family by reciting chunks of Homer-Dixon's work back to them -- I couldn't get it out of my head. I do this a lot to people, but not usually for days and days on end after reading a book.

The Upside of Down isn't an environmental book, exactly, though it does deal with environmental and energy issues. While it shares some themes with more explicitly environmental books (like Jared Diamond's Collapse), the core of the book is more political and sociological. Homer-Dixon is asking why societies collapse -- what are the pressures our society faces today, and what, if any, are the positive results from the kind of collapse he's talking about?

An interview with the directors of Arctic Tale

Adam Ravetch gets up close and personal with his subject. Photo: Arctic Bear Productions After the surprise success of March of the Penguins in 2005 — a film about, well, penguins … marching — it’s pretty clear that people like movies about cute animals in cold places. So it’s no surprise that National Geographic Films, […]

It’s sometimes problematic to attribute migration specifically to climate change

Scholars, policy analysts, and even military officers are breaking down climate change's impacts into what they hope are more manageable topics for examination. The migration that climate change could cause is one such topic. For instance, the Center for American Progress recently posted a piece entitled "Climate Refugees: Global Warming will Spur Migration." The International Peace Academy analyzed "Climate Change and Conflict: The Migration Link" (PDF) in a May 2007 Coping With Crisis working paper. Climate change-induced migration also figured prominently in the security perspective offered by the CNA Corporation's Military Advisory Board in its report, "National Security and the Threat of Climate Change."

In many respects, these pieces are careful in their discussion of the topic. But allow me a few words of caution on climate change and migration, based on what we learned from a series of programs on the topic in the late 1990s here at the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Al Gore does both

Both: “What we’re facing worldwide really is a planetary emergency,” Gore said. “I’m optimistic, but we’re losing this battle badly.” That’s in an article about Al Gore at the Aspen Institute. It’s going to take a 90-percent decrease in carbon emissions from developed fossil fuel guzzlers like the U.S. and a 50-percent decrease worldwide to […]

A mountaineer calls mountaineers climate criminals

David Crosby and Graham Nash's haunting and hypnotic introduction, "To the Last Whale," before the song "Wind on the Water," is the kind of work that we need more of.

What we really need is someone to write a song "To the Last Glacier" quick, so that more people wake up to the truth that this guy has beamed onto: flying on jets because you love some great natural wonder is like f*cking because you love virginity.

Great article.

Old MacDonald Had a Harm

Feds to review endangered-species decisions made by departed official Remember Julie MacDonald? The Bush appointee’s oversight of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ended with her abrupt resignation in May, after she was accused of overriding scientists’ recommendations in order to make decisions beneficial to industry and detrimental to endangered species. Now the Department of […]

Good Things Come to Those Who Relate

Greens should play up the optimism, says Peter Madden It’s a dilemma faced by every green: We know it’s more effective to focus on the positive when talking about environmental crises, but we consistently find ourselves stressing sacrifice and impending chaos instead. (Grist, with its “gloom and doom with a sense of humor” tagline, is […]

Just Call Us the Rainmakers

Study confirms connection between human activity and increased rainfall A study led by Canadian scientists shows that peeps have an effect on precip: “For the first time, climate scientists have clearly detected the human fingerprint on changing global precipitation patterns over the past century,” the team says. Comparing rainfall records from 1925 to 1999 against […]

Viva Zap

Canada, U.S., Mexico sign five-year energy pact Will an energy pact between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico pave the way for alternative fuels or grease the skids for business as usual? Maybe a little of both. The five-year agreement, signed yesterday by Canadian Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, and […]

Lots of good answers

I haven’t watched all of the YouTube/CNN Democratic debate yet. Early reviews are good, and from what I’ve seen it was unusually substantive and spontaneous, but I agree with Josh Marshall that some of the cutesy videos tarnished the dignity of the proceedings a bit. There were three questions on energy and environment. How can […]