tagged w/ blog action day 2009
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Movies entertain but also contribute to the climate change problem around the world. This post is an observation of the practices in film that can be adjusted to improve the state of our climate along with solutions on how to do so and still be able to make great movies.Movies entertain but also contribute to the climate change problem around the world.... more
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Today, October 15 is the official Blog Action Day in which nearly 7,000 bloggers worldwide will blog about the subject of Global Warming in an attempt to increase awareness and generate change! Now this is an exciting event and with that number of participants you would think I would be ecstatic—and I was—until I noticed another number 45. 45 is the number of food bloggers participating. Why is this depressing to me? Because the single most effective way an individual can decrease global warming is by changing the food they eat. I know some of my friends are shaking their heads as they get behind the steering wheels of their hybrids and while I good naturedly kid you all that my Veganism trumps your Prius…..here are the facts about animal agriculture and the environment.......Today, October 15 is the official Blog Action Day in which nearly 7,000 bloggers... more
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You don’t have to believe in global warming to realize that today’s waste will be tomorrow’s want. You do need the desire to conserve what you’ve been blessed with so that you may pass it on to your descendants. (Call it generating long-term wealth if you like.) It’s about our values. And frankly, if our values put politics and accumulating material wealth above the health and well being of our children then we really don’t deserve what we have, but we do deserve what we’ll get.You don’t have to believe in global warming to realize that today’s waste... more
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Suppose you're on a luxury cruise ship (with no lifeboats) a thousand miles from anywhere.
While you're sipping your martini and sunbathing, an announcement blares over the loudspeaker. "This is your captain speaking. We've got a leak in the ship. We're all going to drown unless we get to the bottom deck and start hauling out the water as fast as it comes in. We need everyone's help!"
Being a sane, smart, non-suicidal person, you race to help, screaming for everyone else to do the same. On the way, you pass a batch of people still sunbathing. "Didn't you hear the captain?" you ask, liberally sprinkling your question with profanities too vile for this family-friendly blog.
They laugh at you. "That captain is full of crap. This ship isn't sinking."
What would you do? You could call them more vile profanities, but they are essential to your survival, so you'd want to use every manner of persuasion to get their help. You could kick them overboard so the ship had less to hold up, but that would waste time, which, according to the captain, is running out.
That's the challenge of Climate Change as allegory. Let's extract the meaning.
The captain represents the expert scientists who tell everyone there is a problem. You (starring as yourself) being sane, smart and non-suicidal, conclude the captain is an expert and knows what he's talking about. After all, you trust him to pilot the ship while you sleep, get drunk, watch bad dinner theater and marinate your privates in a hot tub alongside complete strangers and their privates. You're living every day with a trust that the skipper knows his stuff. It would be absurd to suddenly doubt his ability to judge the vessel's seaworthiness.
The arrogant deniers in the story represent, well, arrogant deniers.
I know, I know. We should respect others' opinions, but science isn't a question of preference or taste. Acknowledging Climate Change is a matter of everyone believing the experts that they rely on for everything else in their lives (scientists) from car safety to medicine to food production to whether or not a container labeled "microwave-safe" really is, on and on and on.
Can we please give scientists priority on matters of science?
Back in the day, I read science magazines a lot. I still do, though not as much. Back then (and now) all the science magazines spoke about global warming as a fact. The popular news didn't speak of it a peep. That changed when Al Gore hit the scene with An Inconvenient Truth and raised the alarm on Climate Change. Suddenly all the political (non-scientist) opponents of Mr. Gore, who have never ever discussed science in any depth, are speaking like Doctorates of Meteorology, claiming with absolute certainty that Climate Change is a hoax. I believe their dislike (or jealousy) of Al Gore has clouded their judgment.
This is what is so terrifying about Climate Change. We need everyone's participation to reverse, slow or mitigate its effects, but some people just can't stand the fact that Al Gore was the messenger. That's one psychological breakdown of Climate Change denial, but there are alternate explanations.
For example, the denial might be rooted in a disconnection with the earth and a lack of understanding of its connectedness. It's hard for short-sighted people who have never poked their heads beyond the confines of their own asses to worry about Climate Change. So what if an iceberg melts? They say. It doesn't affect my water supply. Who cares if honeybees die? I can always just go the store and get food.
[...more at link...]Suppose you're on a luxury cruise ship (with no lifeboats) a thousand miles from... more
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What is required [...] is an art education that is deeply integrated with—and thus able to respond meaningfully to—environmental concerns, an art education that configures a space from which students become aware of and respond to the challenge of sustainability—that is, the challenge of “sustaining not economic growth, development, market share, or competitive advantage, but the entire web of life on which our long-term survival depends”—a space in which students become ecologically literate, which, according to Fritjof Capra, means “understanding the basic principles of ecology and being able to embody them in the daily life of human communities“.What is required [...] is an art education that is deeply integrated with—and... more
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Change is consistent in being inconsistent as change changes in a blink of an eye. It is just a matter of time... and a matter of consistency. Change is inevitable. Same for the host of all living things, Mother Earth is changing. I guess you have heard of global warming, ice caps and glaciers melting, and the rest that implicates a change - it is often referred as climate change.Change is consistent in being inconsistent as change changes in a blink of an eye. It... more
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