Articles by Jon Rynn

Race to make the Earth look like the Moon

What with drought threatening large sections of the American West and South, perhaps it should not be surprising to see this article from the Chicago Tribune, "Great Lakes key front in water wars; Western, Southern states covet Midwest resource," in which the reporter warns:

With fresh water supplies dwindling in the West and South, the Great Lakes are the natural-resource equivalent of the fat pension fund, and some politicians are eager to raid it. The lakes contain nearly 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water ... Water levels of the Great Lakes are down substantially, and while that may be part of the historic cycle of ups and downs, water managers argue the region must jealously guard what is here

Even New Mexico Governor and Presidential candidate Bill Richardson couldn't resist the temptation to speculate on using the lakes. Fortunately, there is a concerted attempt to protect them:

Eight Great Lakes-area states, from Minnesota to New York, and two Canadian provinces have proposed a regional water compact that would, among other things, strengthen an existing ban on major water diversions outside the Great Lakes Basin, home to 40 million Americans and Canadians

Stopping global warring and global warming

Ted Glick is on the 44th day of his fast, by my count, as part of his effort to bring awareness to and demand action concerning global warming. On Sunday through Tuesday, October 21 to 23, there will be a series of protests and actions grouped under the name "No war, no warming." It is an attempt to bridge the two issues of ending the war in Iraq and global warming by taking immediate action to:

Stop the war in Iraq and future resource wars by ending our addiction to fossil fuels;

Shift government funding to rebuild New Orleans and all communities suffering from racism and corporate greed;

Go green and promote environmental justice with new jobs in a clean energy economy.

In my last post, I argued that it is important for environmental activists to build coalitions with others that are working for progressive change, for instance among European-Americans and African-Americans. In this post, I want to discuss the meaning of peace, war, and the military, and how integrating these issues might help in the fight to save the biosphere -- and how people might understandably feel that such issues might hurt such efforts as well.

In this era of an alleged "war on terror" (really more of a police investigation of terror), people are skittish about criticizing the military. Taking on the military might seem futile, might seem to alienate a large constituency of people open to action on global warming. While I don't hope to change that perspective with this post, I want to at least offer a few ideas to think about.

First of all, the long-term military capability of the U.S. is dependent on our ability to produce the machinery that is used by sustainable energy, transportation, and agricultural sectors of the economy. The reason: the military depends on a healthy manufacturing sector in order to produce its tanks, jets, and ships.

Time to think about the global food system

An excellent article, "The Globalization of Hunger," appears over at the Madre website on the absurdities (as in moving food all over the globe) and injustices (kicking people off their land so agribusiness can grow exportable crops) of the global agricultural system.

From black to white: An argument for green-collar jobs

"Spiritually fulfilling, ecologically sustainable, and socially just" is the title of a recent speech by Van Jones, who has been appearing in strategic places for a few years now. As cofounder of the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, he has been attempting to fight environmental pollution that has been poisoning the residents of inner-city areas in Oakland and all over the country. As such, he is in a unique position to bridge a rather wide chasm: the African-American community and the environmental community.

In my previous post, I put forward a utopian realist agenda that, I hypothesized, would solve many of our global environmental problems -- that was the realist part -- but that was completely utopian politically. But another definition of utopian is envisioning a better place -- and I want to pursue the possibility in this post that such an agenda would create a basis for a widespread coalition, of the sort that Van Jones has been pursuing.

For instance, he has been lobbying for green-collar jobs legislation that could be used to increase employment in poor areas while helping to decrease greenhouse-gas emissions. Jones shows up in another interesting place: in a critical section of Nordhaus and Shellenberger's essay, "The Death of Environmentalism" (p.26):

Van Jones, the up-and-coming civil rights leader and co-founder of the California Apollo Project, likens [labor unions, civil rights groups, businesses, and environmentalists] ] to the four wheels on the car needed to make "an ecological U-turn." Van has extended the metaphor elegantly: "We need all four wheels to be turning at the same time and at the same speed. Otherwise the car won't go anywhere."