Readers talk back about Wal-Mart, vegetarian jokes, hope for the future, and more

  Re: The Writing on the Wal-Mart Dear Editor: First let me say, I love Grist and appreciate the work...

Better Late Than Clever

Democrats unveil plan to cut dependence on oil imports Yesterday, Senate Democrats presented a proposal to cut U.S. dependence on...

Americans and Climate Change: Incentives: Educators

"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.

Why don't elementary and high-school educators do a better job teaching about climate change? Find out below!

Honorably Discharged

Supreme Court sides with enviros on licenses for hydroelectric dams Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in the...

New initiatives from Whole Foods

I wrote a post a little while back about the exchange going on between food writer Michael Pollan and Whole Foods Market honcho John Mackey. The subject has been some claims about Whole Foods' relationship to "industrial organic" made in Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma. Read that previous post for background.

Mackey has written another detailed letter to Pollan. It's interesting throughout, but the big news comes at the end, when Mackey announces a series of new initiatives the company is undertaking. They will be attempting to build up a system of animal-compassionate small farms, buying more local food, setting up a loan program for small farmers, opening their parking lots for local farmers to sell directly to consumers (!), and increasing consumer education on the subject of local food. Pretty radical stuff.

I haven't seen this picked up in the mainstream media yet, but I expect it will be.

Here's the relevant part of the letter:

Guilt tripping

The Tyee is running an interview with University of British Columbia professor and sustainability guru John Robinson, with some sage advice on how to coax us out of cars:

"We should stop guilt-tripping people, stop telling them that they are putting three tons of carbon a month into the air with their cars when they live 40 kilometers from work and there is no transit. That actually makes them more resistant to change. The way you get behaviour change is through integrated programs aimed at behaviour, not just people's heads. There is a lot of work in health promotion -- in anti-obesity campaigns and breast-cancer screening and anti-smoking campaigns -- that shows the way to much successful behaviour-modification programs. We should learn from those." [Emphasis added.]

That seems just about right to me. Ultimately, guilt isn't motivating; it's just dispiriting.

What if the world cared about sustainability as much as soccer?

Over the last few weeks, much of the world has clustered around TVs, watching World Cup rivals fight for the...

What we can learn from anti-smoking advocates

Jamais Cascio -- late of Worldchanging, now ensconced in a snug new blog home -- has an intriguing post up arguing that there are parallels between the climate-crisis debate and the smoking debate of yore, and furthermore that those pushing the climate-crisis issue have much to learn from anti-smoking advocates.

I think he's right on both counts. But I also think he's being rather optimistic about both the parallels and the lessons. Consider this:

Americans and Climate Change: Diffusion of responsibility I

"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.

This chapter is about the fact that no organization or institution bears responsibility for taking action on climate change. Everyone assumes someone else will do it. I've put the first section, which describes the problem, below. Tomorrow I'll post the proposed solutions.