Articles by Erik Hoffner

A new play with historical and environmental roots

If theater is your thing, here's a great short review of the new play The Boycott -- by Kathryn Blume -- that challenges assumptions about what environmental activism should look like. A humorous and serious one-woman show, it's a contemporary take on Aristophanes' comedy Lysistrata, in which women from Athens and Sparta refuse to sleep with their husbands until they stop the war. Blume's schedule brings the show to Alaska and Vermont this month, and New Hampshire and Missouri this spring.

The Forest Guild on climate change

Here's a window into how foresters are looking at climate change: the Forest Guild is a national, nonprofit network of practicing foresters whose advice and efforts on behalf of their landowner clients has a big role to play in the health and future of privately owned forests. The Guild "promotes ecologically, economically, and socially responsible forestry as a means of sustaining the integrity of forest ecosystems" (and the welfare of those dependent on them).

So it's not a big surprise that the new edition of their publication, Forest Wisdom (large PDF), goes to some depth in exploring the challenges presented by climate change. It includes articles like "Recent Trends in US Private Forest Carbon" (of nine forest regions identified by the Forest Service, four are most important in terms of potential carbon gains and losses -- the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest/Lake states, and Pacific Northwest -- due to their high ratio of private ownership, high productivity, and intensity of management), and also a piece on carbon markets.

What caught my eye was the cover story by editor Fred Clark, "Forest Stewardship in a Changing World," the main issues of which he describes like this:

Forest practitioners will be on the frontlines in the effort to protect our forests and our environment from the effects triggered by changing climate. Guild members already possess many of the tools and skills that will be most needed ... [and] are well-suited for meeting both the new realities and expectations that society is rapidly placing on forests.

The "What's New" section of their site links to this edition of the publication, and lots of other interesting papers all delightfully full of forester-speak, but I wanted to (heavily) paraphrase here some of Fred's main points contained in the cover story:

Climate refugees and Wi-Fi pollution

The Ecologist is such a great magazine. But I'm sorry that they don't make any of their content freely available online for me to link to here, because the Dec/Jan issue has some really important reading. For one, the world's first (human) climate refugees are about to lose their islands (in the Sunderbans Delta, which straddles the border of India and Bangladesh and is the world's largest mangrove forest, due to increased flows of water from melting glaciers in the Ganges headwaters).

There's also a meaty discussion about the possible negative health effects of Wi-Fi. Whether or not Wi-Fi microwaves actually cause headaches, sleep disturbance, depression, memory loss, and worse, as some studies claim, it is pretty remarkable -- according to a physicist interviewed for the piece -- that this technology could come to market and become ubiquitous without having to undergo safety trials or scrutiny.

The movement’s greatest challenge is its own lack of diversity

The following is a guest essay by Marcelo Bonta. Marcelo is founder and director of the Center for Diversity & the Environment and the Young Environmental Professionals of Color. He is also a senior fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program and a member of the advisory board of the Orion Grassroots Network.

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How Do We Diversify?

Diversifying the environmental movement is one of the greatest challenges we face this century. Not only is it the right thing to do, but the movement needs to keep up with the rapidly changing demographics of the U.S. if it is to remain effective. Today, people of color in the U.S. amount to over 100 million people (about one third of the population), and by 2050, their numbers will more than double, growing to almost 220 million (over 50 percent of the population). People of color already constitute a majority of the population in California, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Texas.

The political and social implications of an increasingly diverse population and nation are vast. Communities of color have a mounting influence on society and politics, including the distribution of public finances, the way cities develop and grow, and the strength and creation of environmental laws and policies. Diversifying is not only a great challenge but also a great opportunity.

Can you imagine if the environmental movement was effective at engaging people of color and leveraging their substantial support and talents? Millions of new supporters would surely translate into more political victories for the environment, more public support, more members, a larger volunteer base, richer partnerships and more financial support. In other words, the movement would be potentially more successful and influential than it ever has been before.

Furthermore, people of color support environmental issues at a higher level than their white counterparts.