Culture

Robert Redford chats about the new green programming on the Sundance Channel

Robert Redford. With his legendary Sundance Film Festival, Robert Redford brought sex appeal to the business of independent filmmaking. Now, with his Sundance cable channel, he’s aiming to do the same thing for another underappreciated art form — eco-themed television programming. Tonight, the channel launches “The Green,” a block of environmental programming that will air […]

Amanda Little Culture

A reintroduction

I'm restarting my series on solutions to global warming, both on how to phase out fossil fuels and the best means to sequester carbon, because I consider the topic a critical one.

The carbon lobby has mostly (not entirely) given up disputing that global warming is occurring. They know that they won't be able to confuse the public on its human-caused nature much longer.

But a final stalling tactic is open to deniers -- to pretend that nothing can be done, or at least nothing that most people are willing to live with. There is an old engineering saying: "no solution, no problem."

Converging with this, there is a small but unfortunately influential primitivist movement. In their belief that technology itself is totalitarian, they also contribute to the idea that the only solution to global warming is a drastic reduction in the technical level of civilization -- perhaps down to the hunter-gatherer level. Many well-meaning, intelligent people promote a less extreme version of this trope -- the conviction that we need to impoverish working people in rich nations to solve our environmental crisis and deal justly with the poorer countries.

The primary purpose of this series is to ensure that energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies become known as inexpensive fossil fuel substitutes available today, rather than a high-priced vision of tomorrow. The U.S. needs to understand that continued use of fossil fuel is a political decision rather than a technical one.

Gar Lipow Culture

Umbra on wine corks

Dear Umbra, Not that I am a big-drinking old lady or anything, but I find myself with a lot of wine corks that I can’t find a recycling outlet for. All of my retired farmer friends have made all the cork trivets the neighborhood can stand. What to do with our corks, please? Marianne de […]

Ask Umbra® Culture

What a bunch of whiners

So, remember that lawsuit by the automakers against states implementing California’s clean air standards? The one I said might be dismissed, um, several weeks ago? Breaking: it wasn’t dismissed! In fact, the trial is rolling along, and the whiny-ass-titty-baby automakers are in court right now arguing that they don’t have the smarts, money, or time […]

David Roberts Culture

With Habitat for Humanity

In a recent collaboration with U2 on "The Saints Are Coming," Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day sang about a house in New Orleans. But he spent this weekend hammering soffit onto one, as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. Armstrong brought along some friends and his fam to help with the project as well, […]

Grist staff Culture

Is the information age killing off honeybees?

For a while now, scientist have been scratching their heads over the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, a phenomenon in which bees away from their hives never return after going out to collect pollen.

But according to a recent report filed by The Independent, scientists are now considering the possibility that the cause of CCD may be electromagnetic interference from mobile phone networks. From the article:

Jerome Woody Culture

Can you hear me now that I’m standing in the field with no yield?

Don't know if this story will turn out to be a tempest in a teapot or kick like typhoon in a tender spot, but the implications if the latter are profound.

For you youngsters, Jack Benny's stage persona was as a miser; he used to do a bit where he would get held up and the robber would say, "Your money or your life!" Then there'd be this pause. "Well?!"

And Jack would reply "I'm thinking ..."

JMG Culture

The Talmud and global warming

As global warming deniers move from "it's not happening" to "it's not human-caused" to "but it's good for you" to "it's too expensive to fix," I'm reminded of a tale from the Talmud.

It seems a family was accused of returning a clay pot they had borrowed cracked beyond repair.

The accused family had three defenses:

They never borrowed the pot.
The pot already had a crack in it when received.
They returned the pot completely unharmed.

Perhaps it is unfair to assume this story is about global-warming deniers just because it centers on a cracked pot.

Gar Lipow Culture

Something that destructive outside SHOULD be unpleasant inside

A comment left on Sam Smith's Progressive Review discussion of cell phone bans on commercial airline flights:

I don't give a wet slap why the FAA continues to ban cell phone use on airplanes so long as the keep doing it. People who use their cell phones in public places are loud and obnoxious, and on an airplane there's nowhere for anybody else to go. I can always move to the next car on BART, or get off the bus and walk, but for eight hours across the Atlantic trapped in a metal tube with five hundred strangers ...