Every one of us in the Western world has contributed to climate change. – Bill McKibben, American environmentalist, author, and journalist Recently, I organized a couple of events with the goal of showing people how their choices and actions can make a real difference in the effort to end our dependence on fossil fuels like […]
Tag: Environment
Paul Cienfuegos on Community Rights Ordinances
Five minutes and 20 seconds. Grab a cup of coffee and give Paul a listen. Paul and I agree on a lot of things, but we both start from the point that single issue activism is not going to get the work done. Paul is a Evergreen State College (TESC) alum, here is Paul’s website. […]
We're Not in Kansas Anymore.
Hey, Toto. 2 big blizzards in a couple of weeks. One of the complications of global warming is that the warmed atmosphere holds more water vapor and guess what? More water vapor means heavier snowfalls. I scanned this piece quickly and did not see any mention of global warming or climate change. Same thing last […]
Extreme Weather Events! Get used to them.
Lots of news coverage of Frankenstorm, but not much mention of the role that our carbon economy plays in the production of this storm. Hey, mainstream media, can you say Global Warming? Here is what Joe Romm has to say about Hurricane Sandy: Why Hurricane Sandy Has Morphed into a ‘Frankenstorm’ — And Why We […]
Global Warming – are we going to wake up and smell the carbon dioxide?
Big deal. Slow moving disaster. We can see it coming, like a slow moving avalanche, but we don’t appear to have the capacity to respond to slow moving disaster. McKibben has some thoughts on the situation:
Ocean Report
A couple of items on things oceanic came to my attention this week. NYT had a story on collapse of the cod fishery: The Shocking News About Cod The ideal fish for human consumption would mature quickly and reproduce in staggering numbers. This does not describe the Atlantic cod. Cod mature late — at 4 […]
Short Term Profits or Long Term Survival?
The science is in. Climate change is happening, and it is caused by human activity. Yet the oil and gas industries continue to use their immense cash reserves to fund the campaigns of politicians who are climate change deniers. There is a perfectly understandable reason for them doing so: it is profitable. Bought-and-paid-for politicians granted […]
Political Fables for a Political Year
The WA Post has back to back stories in my digest this morning that I found interesting. In the first story, the Government Accountability Office found that the Republican’s budget showdown over the debt limit coast the county 1.3 billion dollars last year. That is money that we could have used somewhere else in my […]
Quotes for a Snowy Thursday Morning
Yep, it’s snowing again in Western Washington. Very pretty, just an inch or so here in Chehalis. I expect it will be gone soon, but as daylight appeared, the neighborhood was especially appealing to the eye. I collect quotes. They are useful in so many ways. Sometimes the author captures something large in very few […]
On Holding Down The Conversational Fort, Or, Jobs, Republicans, And Hooey
As the next Congressional fight over payroll tax extensions and unemployment benefits and pipelines gets set up in the next few weeks for either its final chapter or to be kicked down the road a bit farther, one or the other, you’re going to hear a lot from our Republican friends about how much they […]