A More Perfect Market

(DOING THE BEST WE CAN) Wangari Maathai died on Sunday. Andy...

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:02:38 -0700

(DOING THE BEST WE CAN)

Wangari Maathai died on Sunday. Andy Revkin included that video in a post he made in her memory.

It’s a story about a fire, a hummingbird, and countless tiny beakfulls of water. What I love most about it is that it never really ends.

Front lawn, Los Angeles, CA. This is not the best we can do.

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 13:57:00 -0700

Front lawn, Los Angeles, CA. This is not the best we can do.

"The earth gives only one crop of gold. When that crop is divided among a thousand tenants, it feeds..."

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 13:32:17 -0700

“The earth gives only one crop of gold. When that crop is divided among a thousand tenants, it feeds no one for long. This is bad husbandry.”

- Richard Whiteside said that, in John Steinbeck’s Pastures of Heaven.

(HARMONY) It’s a long-winded translation, but I think...

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:59:16 -0700

(HARMONY)

It’s a long-winded translation, but I think those big blue characters are trying to say that when people and water interact harmoniously, the south and north both benefit.

The south and north of China, that is. The land of the raging Yangtze River and the withering Yellow River, respectively. And the interaction is the south to north water diversion project, possibly the biggest infrastructure project in the history of the world.

It’s hard to blame a country of over a billion for trying not to spread their resources more evenly. But it’s also hard to imagine harmony relying so heavily on cement.

"It’s either one fluky summer or a harbinger of what climate change is going to bring. If..."

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:44:09 -0700

“It’s either one fluky summer or a harbinger of what climate change is going to bring. If it’s the latter, baseball teams may want to invest in retractable domes.”

- It’s not every day that we see climate change mentioned (and taken sort of seriously) in a baseball column in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

(THE LESSER EVIL?) Clouding the environmental conscience by...

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:49:00 -0700

(THE LESSER EVIL?)

Clouding the environmental conscience by appealing to the social conscience. Fascinating. Possibly brilliant. And definitely terrifying.

Thank you Mother Jones, and thank you Larry Pryor.

Strange animals, we humans. (Photo by Scott Olson, originally...

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 12:16:07 -0700

Strange animals, we humans.

(Photo by Scott Olson, originally published by Popular Science, republished by Joe Romm, and known to me because of this Think Progress post about climate change adaptation and spending cuts.)

"Without water we are nothing, the traveler thought. Even an emperor, denied water, would swiftly..."

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:43:00 -0700

“Without water we are nothing, the traveler thought. Even an emperor, denied water, would swiftly turn to dust. Water is the real monarch and we are all its slaves.”

- That comes from Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence.

Wise words.

Makes me think of Cortés in Tenochtitlan and, more currently, the south-north water diversion project.

"The smell of gasoline made the sight of the palm trees seem sad."

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:15:00 -0700

“The smell of gasoline made the sight of the palm trees seem sad.”

- Pulled that from John Fante’s Ask the Dust.

Here’s the whole paragraph:

And so I was down on Fifth and Olive, where the big street cars chewed your ears with their noise, and the smell of gasoline made the sight of the palm trees seem sad, and the black pavement still wet from the fog of the night before.

Palm trees are everywhere in the book (everywhere in the first 60 pages, at least), and the narrator is worried about their happiness in a city increasingly dominated by cars.

It was a fair worry, in my opinion. But it’s worth noting that many of those same LA palms are hanging in there today, convinced, it seems, that trees still have some say in this city.

What Plato Might Think of the Climate Change Debate

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:15:29 -0700

What Plato Might Think of the Climate Change Debate:

Far too quiet on the blogs these past couple of months. Too little reading. Too much family. Too much Chinese study. Too many excuses.

But right now is a new right now, so maybe the dry spell is ending. With some nice, neat philosophical logic.

Thank you, Larry, for the heads up.

"After a century in which medical diagnosis and treatment, computer and communications systems,..."

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:06:00 -0700

“After a century in which medical diagnosis and treatment, computer and communications systems, aerospace and nanotech industries, and nearly every other form of technology have routinely achieved the magical, energy production is essentially what it was in the time of James Watt.”

- James Fallows wrote that, in an article he published last December about China, energy demand, experimentation, and coal-fired power.

Achieving the magical. Great goal.

"Who were these people? How did they live? What were their weird beliefs? What strange religions or..."

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 09:43:06 -0700

“Who were these people? How did they live? What were their weird beliefs? What strange religions or goofy nonsense caused them to build all this stuff? Why did they plan and execute a massive system of freeways on such an immense scale when the safest, cleanest and most efficient system would have been mass transit, pedestrian walkways and canals like ours?”

- The world could probably do with a little more Aztec sensibility.

Thank you Sesshu Foster.

(LIVIN ON STORED SUNSHINE) Gotta love the courage to be silly....

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 08:54:42 -0700

(LIVIN ON STORED SUNSHINE)

Gotta love the courage to be silly. Especially in a teacher. Makes me think of Clifford Stoll. Silliness as a highlighter, an invitation to focus.

Here’s Richard Alley again, without his guitar or videocamera, talking about climate and money:

If you take our scientific understanding and you couple it to an economic model, and you say what should we do, the economic model says, to make money, we start investing now. And if you tell the economic model our uncertainties - this is science; its not revealed truth, okay; you’re not sure about that - if you tell the economic model how uncertain we are, the economic model says invest more now.

Big thanks, as usual, to Andy Revkin.

"In its first year, the Refresh campaign garnered more than eighty million votes, got three and a..."

Tue, 17 May 2011 12:51:52 -0700

“In its first year, the Refresh campaign garnered more than eighty million votes, got three and a half million ‘likes’ on Pepsi’s Facebook page, and drew some sixty thousand Twitter followers. It was heartening to see so many worthy projects get funded - homeless shelters, school playgrounds, education programs for teen-age mothers - and maybe you thought better of Pepsi for it. But the campaign didn’t sell Pepsi. In 2010, the number of cases of blue-can Pepsi that were sold declined 4.8 per cent from the previous year. During the same period, PepsiCo also lost 2.6 per cent of the over-all carbonate-drink market. … It appears that hearing about all the good things PepsiCo is doing to help make the world a better place doesn’t tempt you to down a Pepsi.”

- That’s from a New Yorker article about Pepsi’s attempt to increase it focus on the long term.

According to the Wall Street Journal (via a parenthetical reference in the New Yorker article), Pepsi’s problem might have something to do with who drinks Pepsi and who doesn’t…

Indeed, many voters and grant winners say they don’t generally buy soda. Don Evans, who runs a Vancouver homeless shelter that won a $25,000 grant in October, said his clients would have had no place to store their belongings were it not for the Refresh Project. But the shelter doesn’t serve soda, and Mr. Evans says he doesn’t even drink it.

Change would come a lot easier if everyone weren’t so goddamn different.

The Chinese Government Eats Organic Veggies

Thu, 12 May 2011 01:04:00 -0700

The Chinese Government Eats Organic Veggies:

Maybe the CCP is about to accomplish by accident what Jimmy Carter didn’t on purpose.

Climate Change, Political Objectivity, and the "Liberal Media" Meme

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 23:05:30 -0700

KPCC’s Larry Mantle talked to Geneva Overholser and Eric Alterman on Thursday night about objectivity in journalism. (The conversation airs on Monday.)

Geneva said she favors a reporter that fights his inevitable biases and wrestles his mind (and published material) open to people and arguments with which he disagrees.

Eric said he favors a reporter that investigates, presents evidence, draws conclusions, and lets readers decide whether or not to trust her.

Larry tried to make sure that his program presented objectivity objectively. And, in my opinion, he tried too hard….

Eric, to illustrate his assertion that journalism’s insistence on objectivity has done big harm, brought up the way in which anthropogenic climate change has been covered over the past decade. Though almost all scientists agree that humans are destabilizing the climate, American mainstream media has given half of its climate reporting pagespace to “experts” that deny human involvement in global warming.

Geneva agreed. Debates make great stories, and media organizations have helped to create a widespread but scientifically irrelevant debate.

Larry, however, applauded the journalists whose reporting highlighted the “scientific debate.” There have been holes in the science all along, he said, and journalistic skepticism has helped push the scientists to address those holes and improve what is still an incomplete understanding of a complex phenomenon.

I was surprised. It seemed strange that an urban Californian public radio MC would react like that.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Maybe it’s perfectly normal to be more concerned with nitty gritty scientific progress than the fact that half the country doesn’t believe the science at all.

Or maybe Larry doesn’t believe that humans are causing climate change, and he was trying to disagree with his guests without derailing a conversation that was supposed to be about journalism, not climate.

Or maybe, as I suspect, Larry was fighting to maintain AirTalk’s political objectivity. Fearing the “liberal media” label, he presented a somewhat absurd but also somewhat conservative-friendly viewpoint. He diluted truth with objectivity.

"The Mongol invasion scrubbed nearly 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, according to..."

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 14:15:23 -0700

“The Mongol invasion scrubbed nearly 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, according to surprising new research.”

- That’s the lede on a Mother Nature Network article from early this year.

Scrubbed. Wrong word. Slightly celebratory. Fuel for the anti-environmentalist fire.

Fascinating research. Could be useful someday. Needs good reporting.

Thanks to bokane.org for the heads up.

On Radiation, Activism, and Science

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:54:39 -0700

On Radiation, Activism, and Science:

Above is a link to an article by George Monbiot about a recent email conversation he had with Dr. Helen Caldicott, who he calls “the world’s foremost anti-nuclear campaigner.”

To support his article, Monbiot has posted on his blog both the emails themselves and what he calls an “interrogation” of Dr. Caldicott’s responses to his questions.

Fascinating (and disheartening) to see such a parallel between what is ultimately an anti-pollution movement (no on nuclear power) and what can be described as a pro-pollution movement (yes on unregulated greenhouse gas emissions).

(RISK AND RADIOACTIVITY) Click the image (then click it again)...

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:33:00 -0700

(RISK AND RADIOACTIVITY)

Click the image (then click it again) to make the words big enough for reading.

We should be scared. Scared of unreflective hero worship. Scared of corporate secrecy. But probably not all that scared of “toxic plutonium pools around stricken reactors.” And certainly not scared, according to a quiet corner of the infographic above, of cell phones:

“A cell phone’s transmitter does not produce ionizing radiation* and does not cause cancer. *Unless it’s a bananaphone.”

"While the average citizen can receive harsh punishment under federal law for dumping a car battery..."

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:48:11 -0700

“While the average citizen can receive harsh punishment under federal law for dumping a car battery into a pond, gas companies, thanks to what has become known as the Halliburton Loophole, are allowed to pump millions of gallons of fluid containing toxic chemicals into the ground, right next to our aquifers, without even having to identify them.”

- Read that in Vanity Fair’s fracking article from last summer.

The federal law it references is the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which, according to VF, was “crafted by Dick Cheney in closed-door meetings with oil-and-gas executives.”

Clearly not the best we can do.