I have many friends who are despairing that, with Bernie Sanders’s exit from the presidential race, the United States has lost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to elect a leader who is honest, reliable, and completely untethered to the vested interests that keep our whole system careening towards catastrophe (climate change, ecological collapse, mass extinction, out-of-control AI, […]
Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
The Epistemically Challenged States of America
Posted in Cultural politics, Politics, tagged Algoricene, algorithmic transparency, cultural policy, digital culture, epistemology, fake news, global media literacy, global media studies, information war, media ecology, media hygiene, media literacy, media policy, media theory, political polarization, Russia, Ukraine, Ukrainianization on December 2, 2019 | 7 Comments »
Or, Why Ukraine- and Russia- literacy should now be mandatory studies for every voting American One could start with another question: Why are both the politics of climate change and politics in general so polarized these days? Political polarization, after all, remains the main complaint of Americans, and it has made it impossible to make […]
Climate Action Week: What to watch for
Posted in Climate change, Eco-culture, Politics, tagged capitalism, climate communication, climate movement, ClimateJustice, Green New Deal, Greta Thunberg, memetic warfare, UN Climate Action Summit on September 16, 2019 | 3 Comments »
As people around the world prepare for Global Climate Strike Week (Sept. 20-27) and for the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City on Sept. 23, here are some thoughts and sources to help us think about what’s at stake, what’s possible, and what we can do. This blog may be updated as needed, […]
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 […]
On cultural civil conflict
Posted in Cultural politics, Politics, tagged affect, affective contagion, civil religion, civil war, cultural civil war, cultural values, cultural war, culture, mass murder, politics of affect, red states-blue states, Trumpland, United States on October 5, 2017 | 8 Comments »
I think it’s fair to say that the United States is in a state of cultural civil war. It is cultural war in the sense that it is a war fought with signs and symbols rather than with guns — signs and symbols intended to elicit affiliation, allegiance, and identification with one or another party to the […]