Soviet-induced water crises push Eastern European nations to consider solutions

The following is a guest essay from Eric Pallant, professor of environmental science at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa., and codirector of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Integrated Water Resources Management. He is reporting from the National Disasters and Water Security conference in Yerevan, Armenia.

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October 19, 2007

I have to hand it to NATO for dishing out money to sponsor Advanced Research Workshops on environmental security. And I must congratulate Armenia for organizing Natural Disasters and Water Security: Risk Assessment, Emergency Response, and Environmental Management. It shows recognition on the part of both parties that security involves more than advanced weaponry. Conference Director Dr. Trahel Vardanian, in a wide-wale pinstripe suit, does not speak English -- but he must have realized how valuable it would be to host this international meeting. Armenia is a country in transition.

At street level, it seems as if half the city is torn asunder by cranes and bulldozers busily replacing the old Soviet cement-block architecture with sparkling new parks, scalloped stone boulevards, broad-windowed import shops, and new Armenian cement-block high-rises. I see 30-year-old Soviet Ladas and glossy new Nissans side-by-side. Young women in tight jeans and heels, gossiping in Armenian, skitter past old women in babushkas and heavy grey sweaters. Their grandmothers are still selling sunflower seeds on the sidewalk.

Yerevan woman selling bread on the street. (Photo: Eric Pallant)

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The Heartland Institute accidently steals seventh grader’s paper

I got a weird mailing yesterday from The Heartland Institute: a little pamphlet titled "Scientific Consensus on Global Warming: Results of an international survey of climate scientists."

Amazingly, there is a price list on the inside cover; this little gem could be yours for only $5.95. I looked all over the Institute's website but couldn't find the darn thing, until finally I thought to look under "Books," and lo and behold -- the 5" x 8", 23-page pamphlet was listed there.

I'd say one for everyone in your family ... and you could probably spring for one for everyone at work. Heck, you might just get up into discount territory (101 copies or more for $2.95 each)!

You could teach an entire class in propaganda with this jewel as your only example -- a master class in careful statements designed to strongly suggest without ever quite making a clear statement.

Is it only OK to talk about limiting population after it’s too late?

Sam Smith, inimitable editor of The Progressive Review, perhaps the world's first progressive blog (if you count its days as a print publication), reports that even he finds it difficult to bring up discussions of population.

I have experienced something like what Smith talks about, where even mentioning Bartlett (who has been campaigning against exponential population growth for decades) is enough to get you called nasty names by liberals and "anti-life" by church members.

Here's today's series of looks at the issue, with Smith's preface first:

Greens should talk about climate disasters when people are listening

As Matt Stoller pointed out at Open Left, environmental groups haven't been very quick off the mark in responding to the California wildfires and framing them as a climate disaster. Whether it's Katrina, Rita, the 2003 wildfires, 2004 Florida hurricanes, or any of the numerous other climate disasters of recent years, environmental groups have been slow. It's true that you can't tie any particular climate disaster directly to global warming -- but it's easy enough to acknowledge that and then talk about how these kinds of disasters will become more frequent and more intense as the climate crisis worsens ... and then turn the conversation to solutions.

(photo: Kevin Labianco, Flickr)

Mostly, environmentalists have been timid because they're afraid right wingers will accuse them of "exploiting" the tragedies, but environmental groups shouldn't decide what to say or not say on the basis of a few fringe anti-environmentalists. Framing these events as climate disasters directs the conversation and forces the media to address the question, rather than continuing with the "Mother Nature strikes again" stories they usually run. If we let the right wing define what we say, we'll be 100 percent mute, 100 percent of the time. It's kind of a ridiculous strategy.

The problem with 150 amendments

The Senate convened today at noon, and Republicans raised a stink about it. Why so late? Important business to attend to!

It had to do with the 150 amendments that EPW committee Republicans brought with them to the markup hearing. The long and short of it is that, by Senate rules, any senator can object to the continuance of any committee meetings that continue beyond the first four hours that the Senate is in session.

If the committee meeting and the floor session had, as usual, started close to the same time, the markup might have ended at 1 pm. This buys them two-and-a-half additional hours at least -- a helpful gesture from the Senate leader in the face of this sort of obstructionism. His floor statement and an unofficial transcript of this morning's proceedings are reprinted below the fold:

Manufacturing a new economy

If we eat food from local sources, we can decrease our ecological footprint, reduce carbon emissions, and eat better food. In addition, any society that cannot produce its own food is vulnerable, as it cannot create one of society's main sources of wealth. It just makes sense to grow food locally.

The same principles apply to manufacturing. Grow locally, eat locally; more generally, consume locally, produce locally. In the case of manufacturing, "producing locally" would mean consuming goods that were mostly manufactured within your major metropolitan area, with most of the rest coming from around the country, but certainly not from around the world.

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