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Don’t forget to Step It Up tomorrow

This was posted by my colleague Madeline Ostrander at our mothership blog, but I thought it belonged on Gristmill as well.

What do Washington Congressional Rep. Jay Inslee, the AFL-CIO, a car-sharing company, and a radio DJ have in common? What about swimmers doing a polar bear dip in the Willamette River, a Unitarian Church, and Portland Commissioner Eric Sten? They and thousands of others are, for the first time in history, united on climate change.

Founded by writer Bill McKibben, Step It Up is the largest and most diverse citizen day of action on climate change the U.S. has ever seen. With 1,300 gatherings in cities and small towns across the U.S., could Step It Up be the climate movement's turning point, its "Selma" or "bus boycott" as one activist suggested in yesterday's Oregonian? Step It Up organizers hope so, as the events catch a wide net of supporters -- companies, churches, national labor associations, peace groups, local governments, conservation organizations, and thousands of citizens collectively urging Congress to take action on climate.

In Seattle, nearly 50 partner groups -- including Grist; the AFL-CIO and United Steelworkers; coalitions of peace activists and churches; Sightline Institute; the League of Women Voters; and the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations -- are bringing Rep. Jay Inslee together onstage with Presbyterian minister Lisa Domke, student activist Emily Duncanson, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, and King County Executive Ron Sims. Organizers are expecting thousands from the Puget Sound area to turn out for one-mile march ending in a rally and sustainability fair.

For shame!

This Monday, Newsweek will publish an op-ed by well-known climate-change contrarian Richard Lindzen, which concludes that global warming is nothing to worry about and may even be a good thing. "Why So Gloomy?" he wonders, and adds that "a warmer climate could be more beneficial than the one we have now."

Green glitterati come out to toast new eco-programming on Sundance Channel

The green glitterati of New York City — a surprisingly expansive and glamorous bunch — convened last night to celebrate the launch of Sundance Green, the new block of green programming that will begin airing on the Sundance Channel this coming Tuesday. (Full disclosure: I am a member of the project’s advisory board.) While Robert […]

Check it out , starting tonight

Those of you who listen to public radio know that Marketplace Money from American Public Media has done some good sustainability coverage. This weekend, they’re running a story that includes some tips from my monthly jobs column Remake a Living. Makes me feel all gristy inside. Check the local listings to find out when Marketplace […]

Betting the heat

Here's an excerpt from a great article on global warming:

In 2005, Annan offered to take Lindzen, the MIT meteorologist, up on his bet that global temperatures in 20 years will be cooler than they are now. However, no wager was ever settled on because Lindzen wanted odds of 50-to-1 in his favor. This meant that for a $10,000 bet, Annan would have to pay Lindzen the entire sum if temperatures dropped, but receive only $200 if they rose.

"Richard Lindzen's words say that there is about a 50 percent chance of [global] cooling," Annan wrote about the bet. "His wallet thinks it is a 2 percent shot. Which do you believe?"

Talk is indeed cheap.

T. Rex with feathers

Yahoo News puts it this way:

Based on the small sample we've recovered, chickens may be the closest relatives (to T. rex)," says geneticist John Asara of Beth Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, co-leader of a team reporting the discovery of faint traces of chicken-like bone lining preserved inside a dinosaur drumstick.

Science says it this way:

From Pimpinator to Prom Night

Muscle preach Listen here, enviros: A-Schwarz wants to pimp you up. And he’s got plans for the climate-hatas, too: soon they’ll be the ones “like prohibitionists at a frat party,” while greens are hot and sexy. Hey, guess we can cross that off our to-do list. Photo: H. William Foster / WireImage.com The less brief, […]

They’ve got it, they shouldn’t be ashamed of using it

In a previous post, I argued that the public doesn’t particularly need a sophisticated scientific understanding of climate change (or evolution, or stem cells) in order to make the right basic policy decisions. A rudimentary understanding, deliverable and understandable by a layman, is perfectly sufficient. We’re warming the climate? It’s gonna hurt us? Let’s stop. […]

Alabama’s Bankhead forest next?

Until today I was ignorant of the spread of this nasty sort of mining. Its impact is well documented in the antelope and sage grouse country of the intermountain West, leaving a trail of ruined land and poisoned wells. But companies are also drilling and fracturing this stuff out of the ground in the East, too.

Not as simple as it seems

Before any Grist readers write off this article in the Economist, read it through and get to the conclusions at the bottom. They might surprise you.

They also contain another lesson not mentioned in the article: we need to value comprehensive ecosystem services from forests, not just any single dimension.