Latest Articles
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Americans and Climate Change: Diffusion of responsibility I
"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.
This chapter is about the fact that no organization or institution bears responsibility for taking action on climate change. Everyone assumes someone else will do it. I've put the first section, which describes the problem, below. Tomorrow I'll post the proposed solutions.
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The $36,000 baby rebate
Robert Samuelson has written a birth dearth article for the Washington Post, as has Daniel Gross for Slate. Birth dearth articles appear on a fairly regular basis and are almost indistinguishable from one another. Typically they are initiated when some industrialized nation with low fertility rates announces a game plan to goad its women into having more babies, or when another book on the subject hits the market. In this case it is Vladimir Putin who has proposed that Russia pay women a lump sum bribe of $36,000 to have a child.
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Why we’re not Brazil
BioD already mentioned it in comments, but I thought I'd draw above-the-fold attention to this post from Robert Rapier on The Oil Drum.
One often hears that Brazil is the model for biofuels usage: They've come close to achieving energy independence by creating ethanol with sugar cane. As Tom Daschle and Vinod Khosla said in their recent NYT op-ed, "Brazil has it figured out; why can't we?"
Rapier explains exactly why:
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Skeptics
One problem with being a slacking blogger is that by the time you get around to writing about something, everyone else has already covered it. So I don't have much new to say about Joel Achenbach's crucial Washington Post piece on the remaining climate-change skeptics.
Some folks are angry that Achenbach gave the skeptics a microphone and refused to pass judgment on them. Others say that by simply giving the skeptics room to make their case in their own words, he skewers them better than any direct attack could, since these wackjobs discredit themselves.
Matt McIrvin and Brad Delong are in the former camp. John Quiggin and Kevin Drum are in the latter camp. As, I suppose, am I. I never trust my perceptions of these articles in the popular press, though. To folks who have followed the debate, these skeptic outliers look like clowns, yes -- we don't need that pointed out. But what about "normal people"? I have no idea.
(See also Achenbach's discussion of the piece and his segment on bloggingheads.tv wherein he discusses it.)
One thing I will say: I don't think it will matter much if the far right's token scientists are finally and totally discredited (much in the way I don't think it matters much that conservative intellectuals have abandoned supply-side economics). These token experts are useful but not necessary. The far right has built a completely insulated, impervious alternate media universe (FOX, talk radio, etc.) through which information is filtered. It doesn't matter if global warming is accepted by all the experts; as long as conservative commentators, radio hosts, and talking heads are willing to spread disinformation -- and have we found any limits yet? -- the disinformation will keep circulating. If experts could quash this stuff once and for all, it would have happened long ago.
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More Gore lies!
Details here.
(Yes, you need to have seen the movie to know what I'm talking about.)
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Americans and Climate Change: Incentives: Environmentalists
"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.
Ah, now it gets personal! Below is what I consider an extremely astute diagnosis of the reasons professional environmentalists haven't engaged the subject of climate change very well.
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Blend Game
Wal-Mart looks into selling ethanol As part of its newfound determination to jump on the eco-bandwagon, Wal-Mart is considering selling E85, an ethanol/gasoline blend, at the gas stations it owns and operates. The mega-chain held an alternative-fuels summit for auto-industry reps, oil companies, government officials, and biofuel producers in Washington, D.C., this week. Still, Wal-Mart […]
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Appy Days Are Here Again
Ancient Arctic was balmy, a discovery that worries climate scientists Fifty-five million years ago, the average temperature of the Arctic was a balmy 74 degrees, according to research published today in Nature. The data was gleaned from the first significant sample of sea-floor sediment ever taken from underneath the thick ice at the North Pole. […]
