Climate Culture
All Stories
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The sports news comes fast and furious
Oy. I am quite behind on my sporting reporting. So I bring you a linky post — thank you, David, for teaching me the ropes. (And I’m sorry you lost your 35-tab ginormous linky post last night. We feel your pain.) Without further ado: Both the print Sports Illustrated and a recent Wall Street Journal […]
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Nine things you should know about musician Andrew Bird
Andrew Bird. Photo: Cameron Wittig/andrewbird.net Meet Andrew Bird. He’s a musician and songwriter who artfully combines his talents on multiple instruments — violin, guitar, glockenspiel, his own flute-like whistling — to create an eclectic, memorable sound that defies typical terms like “indie” and “folk.” Over the last decade, Bird has been gaining momentum, releasing eight […]
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Vote!
A little while back, CNN recruited a right-wing talk radio host named Glenn Beck to host one of its prime-time shows. As MediaMatters rather exhaustively reveals, Beck is an unreconstructed racist, sexist, classist, misogynist, authoritarian, xenophobic troglodyte of the old school. He doesn’t work particularly hard to conceal his trogloditicism. In fact, one suspects CNN […]
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From Knut to Kowabunga
Knut overload Much ado has been made about Al Gordo. But who’s the latest green celeb to pork up? Knut, the polar bear chub. Who would have thought the cuddly li’l guy would grow up? It’s like he’s a wild animal or something. Photo: iStockphoto Compost and get it When we first fell for worm-poop […]
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Technoscientific and … not
I’ve been musing a bit on two different sorts of environmentalism, and I’ve recently come across two good exemplars. First, in Orion, Curtis White argues that environmentalists are involved in a futile enterprise as long as they fight from within the system — as long as they use technoscientific, rationalist, bureaucratic language to fight problems […]
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We’ve got it figured out
It's a big problem, but I've been thinking hard about it and I think I've got it figured out:
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Uh, literally
An Inconvenient Truth replaces the Gideon Bible in fancy new hotel. Dirt-worshiping hippies rejoice.
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Paul Hawken on the remaking of the world
Paul Hawken's new book Blessed Unrest is a much-needed analysis of the movement that's poised to change the world as we know it. It's a must read, (excerpted here in Orion magazine) even if you're not a self-described grassroots activist. In it, he states that "the movement to restore people and planet is now composed of over one million organizations" working toward ecological sustainability and social justice. Maybe two million. And that:
By conventional definition, this is not a movement. Movements have leaders and ideologies. You join movements, study tracts, and identify yourself with a group. You read the biography of the founder(s) or listen to them perorate on tape or in person. Movements have followers, but this movement doesn't work that way. It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. There is no manifesto or doctrine, no authority to check with.
Like we witnessed with the success of Step It Up 2007, the movement can't be divided because it is composed of many small pieces, forming, gathering, and disbanding quickly as need be. The media and politicians may dismiss it as powerless, but "it has been known to bring down governments, companies, and leaders through witnessing, informing, and massing."
This is one of his main conclusions:
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Sawing off the limbs we’ve climbed up to see
From the article "Holiday at the End of the Earth: Tourists Paying to See Global Warming in Action," posted on Common Dreams:
"The idea of global-warming tourism is full of ironies," he said. "If enough people expend enough fossil fuels to visit one Warming Island, they will ensure that there will be many more."
