Wow, what a reaction the article described here has gotten… This version includes a follow-up comment below. Jonathan Franzen’s “What If We Stopped Pretending?” articulates an important point about hope and hopelessness in the face of climate change. Franzen suggests that an “all-out war on climate change” no longer makes sense because the scenario for […]
Archive for the ‘Climate change’ Category
So, here we are…
Posted in Anthropocene, Climate change, Spirit matter, tagged Christianity, ClimateJustice, globalization, hope, Jonathan Franzen, Matthew 25:40 on September 8, 2019 | Leave a Comment »
Green new dealing it…
Posted in Climate change, Politics, tagged Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, campaign finance reform, climate change communication, ecomedia, environmental communication, Fox Business News, Fox News, Green New Deal, Juan Williams, media, right-wing media, Robert Hockett, television, Tucker Carlson on February 9, 2019 | 21 Comments »
For someone who teaches media and environment, it’s heartening to see people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and one of her advisors, Cornell legal star Robert Hockett, break through the media din. Even Tucker Carlson had to admit that “it’s nice to have a smart person” on his show to explain things. (Students, take note.) First, Ocasio-Cortez:
Vermonters & climate change
Posted in Climate change, Politics, tagged climate action, climate motivation, interview, news, small-c conservative values, Vermont, Vermonters, VPIRG, WCAX on November 30, 2018 | 3 Comments »
I was interviewed yesterday by the local CBS-affiliated WCAX news show on the topic of how to motivate Vermonters to take action on climate change (while Bernie Sanders and Cornel West were speaking just up the road). What was used of our interview was fairly minimal, so I thought I would share the notes I […]
Denial, incompetence, & depravity
Posted in Climate change, Politics, tagged circular economy, climate denialism, climate science, ClimateJustice, eco-religion, National Climate Assessment, Paul Krugman, religious conversion, Republican Party, scientific consensus, Trump on November 28, 2018 | 3 Comments »
For many, President Trump’s babbling and incoherent responses to last week’s National Climate Assessment (“I’m too smart to believe it, just look at our air and water and what those other countries are doing…”), following on from his even less coherent responses to California’s wildfire tragedies (“They should rake more, like the Finns”), merely reconfirm that […]
Heads in the sands
Posted in Climate change, Politics, tagged Fourth National Climate Assessment, National Climate Assessment, NCA, reports, United Statesm Trump administration on November 25, 2018 | 1 Comment »
It’s not surprising that the Trump administration would wish to bury the nearly 1700-page Fourth National Climate Asessment, Volume 2: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States, a report written by over 300 scientists representing 13 federal agencies, by having it released on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when most Americans are too […]
Feverish world, or ecotopia now?
Posted in Climate change, Manifestos & auguries, tagged activism, Burlington Vermont, eco-arts, EcoCultureLab, ecotopia, environmental humanities, Feverish World, University of Vermont on November 21, 2018 | 6 Comments »
Feverish World (2016-2068): Arts and Sciences of Collective Survival was premised on the acknowledgment that the coming decades will be feverish in more ways than one — climatologically, politically, economically, militarily — and that the arts will be essential in helping us come to terms with that feverishness. In my comments opening the symposium, I laid […]
Latour’s terrestrial project
Posted in Climate change, Philosophy, tagged Bruno Latour, climate denialism, cosmopolitics, Donald Trump, Down to Earth, ecopolitics, political ecology on October 28, 2018 | 2 Comments »
Review of Bruno Latour, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2018. Down to Earth is in significant part a restatement of Bruno Latour’s theorizing over the last few decades, made more incisive in the light of Trumpism (and other illiberal populisms) and brought to bear specifically on the moment of […]
Skipping an Earthbeat
Posted in Anthropocene, Climate change, Science & society, tagged Aaron Wildavsky, Anthropocene, Bill McGuire, dynamic earth, Earthbeat, earthquakes, environmentalism, fragile Earth, Gaia, geology, Mary Douglas, risk as culture, volcanoes on June 15, 2018 | 4 Comments »
Reading Bill McGuire‘s 2012 book Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Volcanoes, I came across this description of the annual “pulse” called an “Earthbeat,” which is supposedly responsible for Earth’s preference for volcanic eruptions between November and April (also known as “volcano season”): rather like a beating heart, the Earth changes […]
The 5 D’s
Posted in Anthropocene, Climate change, Manifestos & auguries, tagged Alan Weisman, capitalism, Countdown, decapitalization, decarbonization, Decolonization, demilitarization, demographic transition, deplasticization, human population growth, overpopulation, plastic planet on April 11, 2018 | 3 Comments »
… that might get humans to pull through the next few centuries relatively intact as a species (if not undiminished or unscathed): Decarbonization, Deplasticization, Demilitarization, Decolonization, and Demographic Transition. The first, Decarbonization, entails a dramatic reduction in industrial production of atmospheric carbon (and other greenhouse gas) emissions. It will keep conditions for the flourishing of […]
Rant for the day
Posted in Anthropocene, Climate change, tagged agency, Anthropocene, climate solutions, ClimateJustice, Ecozoic, fossil fuel era, global justice, good Anthropocene, sustainability transition on December 14, 2017 | 6 Comments »
Let’s face facts: Life in such cold climates as the one I live in (it was 8°F/-14°C here this morning) would hardly be possible, for us in such numbers as we are, without fossil fuels. The harnessing of fossil fuel energy has enabled tremendous innovation — innovation that, if managed well, could help us get […]
Trump vs. the world
Posted in Climate change, Politics, tagged Nicaragua, Paris climate accord, Trump, U.S. politics on June 2, 2017 | 2 Comments »
Trump’s speech on his decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord included so many questionable statements, it’s hard to know where to start. Fortunately, others have. Among the better fact-checks are the Washington Post’s (this one and this one), FactCheck.org’s, NPR’s, PolitiFact’s, and the Huffington Post’s. Foreign Policy’s summary (which comes from a partisan source, but […]