Latest Articles
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To Russia with love, again
Seems another Chinese chemical spill is on its way to the Russian Far East (RFE). ITAR-TASS out of Moscow reported today that "a five kilometre-long benzol slick resulting from another dumping of chemicals into the Sungari river from a plant in the Chinese province of Jilin is expected to reach Russia's city of Khabarovsk on September 7-8." The story goes on to say that the benzol may evaporate before it reaches the Amur River, the same one that was poisoned last winter by a chemical spill from a factory in the same Chinese province.
Not everyone has a China environment guru to consult on such stories, but luckily I do. She is my colleague, Dr. Jennifer Turner, who directs the China Environment Forum here at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Here is an email where she puts the spill in context:
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Top environment reporters talk about journalism vs. activism
With global warming, biodiversity loss, peak oil, and other environmental problems looming large, those who report on the issues face a dilemma: Do they report the facts dispassionately, or shift to advocacy? How do mainstream reporters deal with this issue? To find out, we asked a few of them. As you’ve covered environmental issues […]
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Eating our vegetables
Apropos of David's random thought, Jeffrey Sachs has an article in this month's Scientific American in which he proposes four ways to reduce human population growth, and therefore reduce the burden on the Earth.
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Water needed in Lebanon
Following up an earlier post on the oil spill off the coast of Lebanon, here is a VOA piece on a new UNICEF field assessment that highlights water availability as a particularly pressing need.
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Target Practice
BP fires up carbon-offset program Oil giant BP, eager to show that it’s Beyond (all the) Petroleum (it’s leaked on the Alaskan tundra), has launched a carbon-offset program for drivers in the U.K. The new “targetneutral” website lets drivers log on to estimate their car’s annual carbon dioxide emissions, then calculate how much they should […]
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Hu’s Fine Is It, Anyway?
China considers fining media outlets for disaster reporting Advancing their reputation as fun-loving goofballs, Chinese officials are considering a new law that would allow local governments to fine media outlets up to $12,500 for reporting on environmental disasters and other emergencies without permission or in a way that “causes serious consequences.” Officials have been embarrassed […]
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Sticker Shock Absorber
Some hybrids can pay back their price premium over time High price of hybrids got you down? According to the gurus at Edmunds.com, the cash some hybrid owners save on gas can make up for the sticker price. Hybrid cars and trucks cost between $1,200 and $7,000 more than their gas-chugging counterparts, but as analyst […]
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How “merchant coal” is changing the face of America
From his rolling green soybean fields above a slow river in eastern Iowa, Don Shatzer looks out over the farm where he was raised, across land he and his neighbors have farmed all their lives. Below him are the garden beds where his wife Linda grows organic vegetables to safeguard the family’s health, and the […]
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Fear and environmentalism: still more
(Third in a series; first part here, second part here.)
Fear and anger can be invigorating, even intoxicating. It's worth thinking about why.
For all too many men -- and let's face it, the vast majority of violence, personal and political, originates with men -- the strong, stoic, squinty ideal of masculinity means that whole ranges of emotional experience simply go unacknowledged, unnamed, and unprocessed.
Some boys are purposefully taught to be ashamed of any hint of vulnerability. They're taught that empathy is a sign of weakness. Their affect is actively suppressed. This comes from repressed, repressive fathers who themselves had repressed, repressive fathers, and so on back through a genealogy of domination and displacement.
More commonly, though, boys simply aren't taught or encouraged to discuss their feelings. Even well-meaning parents can buy into the myth that boys aren't as "sensitive" as girls, and of course this myth is encouraged in a thousand ways by our culture. (When I found out I was having a boy, I read a ton of material on this stuff. See, e.g., Real Boys by William Pollack.)
By commission or omission, the result is the same: emotional illiteracy.
