Articles by Geoff Dabelko

There’s more to talk about in Iran than nukes.

U.S. news coverage of Iran these days is a one-trick pony -- their nuclear program and what is George W. Bush going to do about it. Today, as Iranians vote for their new president, we may read a bit more. But there are environmental stories to tell, and in some cases they are a reaction to the cacophony surrounding the nuke story.

Last month I traveled to Tehran to attend the International Conference on Environment, Peace, and the Dialogue Among Civilizations and Cultures, a two-day conference co-sponsored by the UN Environment Program and the Iranian Department of Environment. The conference, featuring an eclectic mix of environment ministers and NGO and academic experts, was itself a bid for alternative dialogue on something, anything frankly, other than the contentious nuclear proliferation issue.

Because it was a UN-sponsored meeting, the incredibly valuable and thorough Earth Negotiations Bulletin team covered the event and provide a detailed summary and numerous pictures here and here. I wrote a bit more about the conference here as well.

New journal focuses cross-disciplinary work on sustainability.

I have a soft spot for titles that include the kitchen sink and lack what we'll call concision. It comes from regular attempts to bring together strange bedfellows with our Environmental Change and Security Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

So I was heartened and not put off when I received notice of a new open source ejournal Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy.  As explained in an inaugural editorial by journal advisor and renowned biologist E. O. Wilson, "[t]he goal of the publication -- to establish a forum for cross-disciplinary discussion of natural and social sciences, practices, and policies related to sustainability -- is an important step toward creating achievable sustainable practices through buy-in and consensus."

Such forums at the science -policy interface are too few and far between.  This one promises to have a chance to make a difference, even if reading the inaugural issue suggests it will err on the scholarly side of readability.  The journal's private and public backers, CSA, the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII), and Conservation International (CI), bring some diverse ends and means to the table.  

China cracks down on environmental protest

Seems that's what happened last weekend in China after heavy-handed government tactics allegedly led to the deaths of two elderly women protesting polluting chemical factories. Reuters has the story.

Stossel uses Crichton for ratings

Sorry to beat the dead horse that is the John Stossel/Michael Critchton lovefest, but I thought Stossel's On the Media interview April 8 was just too rich to miss. At the end of a somewhat testy interview about the state of scientific consensus on climate change, On the Media co-host Brooke Gladstone said:

In December, you featured novelist Michael Crichton on 20/20, and you praised him for contradicting something most people believe and fear. You went on to say that environmental organizations are fomenting false fears in order to promote agendas and raise money. Why use a fiction writer to refute the scientific community?

JOHN STOSSEL: Because he's famous, and he's interesting, and he's smart, and he writes books that lots of people read, and I could interview the scientists for 20/20, but more people will pay attention when this particular smart fiction writer says it.

Famous! Market grabbers! By those standards, Hollywood is chock-a-block with climate experts.  Let's swell those IPCC ranks!