global warming
Comment on Sex and Fertility in the Post-Petroleum Age
Blog comment in response to Sex and Fertility in the Post-Petroleum Age by Jan Lundberg,
27 July 2010
Look at Historical Evidence
Developed societies like ours, with sanitation, medical care, artificial contraception, and optional bottle feeding of infants, are a recent exception in the history of humanity. The prevailing patterns over the history of our species have involved females becoming fertile at a somewhat later age (16-18 years old), due to less adequate food supply; prolonged breast feeding of infants, which suppresses fertility and ensures a longer inter-pregnancy interval; higher infant and maternal mortality; less investment of effort and calories in infants that have a poor chance of survival or less social utility (e.g., the Greeks abandoning deformed infants at birth); a certain amount of infanticide, usually by men, who kill a woman's children by a former male partner; etc, etc.
Climate Change: We Forget We Have Solved Similar Problems Before
Background - A huge stumbling block for the Climate Change community is that we seem to be approaching this great cause as if humans had never solved any problem like this before. Our response is to keep doing what is easy, instead of what will work. It is easy to focus on raising awareness and to put ads on TV showing the problem and mentioning some incremental approaches to the solution, like windmills or solar installations, or hybrid cars. It is easy to marshal our forces to call Senators and Congresspersons, asking them to pass a particular piece of legislation.
Thinking Big Podcast 3: Green Jobs and America's Role in the World
Commonweal Institute Senior Fellow Patrick O'Heffernan interviews Jason Walsh, National Policy Director of Green For All, and Jim Harkness, President of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, about building a global economy that works for the long-term sustainability of our planet. From the new book from the Progressive Ideas Network, Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era.
Press play to listen, or click here to download.
Preparing for Inevitable Shocks
Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, promises to become a major tool in the fight against rampant privatization and conservative decimation of the public sphere--but only if enough people read it and talk about its ideas. Those interested in progressive social change should also consider the possibility that naturally-occurring shocks or social disruptions can provide opportunities to rectify system dysfunctions and inequities, and move communities in directions that may be more positive for their well-being in the long term.
In an excerpt of the book published in The Guardian, Klein reveals the neoliberal strategy, promoted by the late Milton Friedman, of taking advantage of disasters and socially disorienting events in order to impose radical economic changes:
The Denial Industry
For years, a network of fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies has been claiming that science of global warming is inconclusive. They set back action on climate change by a decade. But who funded them? Exxon's involvement is well known, but not the strange role of Big Tobacco. In the first of three extracts from his new book, George Monbiot tells a bizarre and shocking new story.
Exxon station in California
Tags: smoking, phillip moris, IPCC, global warming
Notes for a Global Warming Survival Guide
Is it too early to begin talking about how to survive the collapse of civilization? If the more pessimistic predictions about global warming are to be believed — and there is reason to believe them — within a decade or two the trend may become irreversible, leading to an accelerating global environmental catastrophe and, as a possible consequence, the breakdown of many of the social and economic systems that much of the world has come to take for granted.
Global Warming: Be Part of the Solution
Despite the ongoing campaign to discredit the science of global warming, a recent TIME/ ABC News/ Stanford University poll reports some encouraging, if surprising, news about American attitudes toward the problem. According to the survey, 85% of Americans now believe that global warming is underway and 80% believe that human activity is contributing to the problem — although two-thirds still think, incorrectly, that there is significant scientific disagreement on the issue (this is one baneful result of the Right's disinformation campaign).
Paradise Warming
With every passing month, it gets harder to see the United States's refusal to address the problem of global warming as anything other than craven prostitution to the fossil fuel industry, a betrayal of future generations, and a suicidal commitment to the status quo. The most recent affront came at last month's international talks on climate change in Montreal. Shortly after midnight on December 9, as delegates were hashing out ideas on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. -- joined by China, the world's other largest polluter -- threatened to pick up its toys and go home.
Talking the Talk....Frank Luntz and Global Warming
If you've noticed conservative politicians sounding strangely pro-environment lately, it's not a coincidence. Rather, it's a campaign designed to reduce the political liability of right-wing candidates on environmental issues. Unfortunately, the campaign is strictly rhetorical -- it's not about changing policies but about changing language.
And that's where Frank Luntz comes in. Luntz, the boyish Svengali of conservative politics, made his name as a pollster who concentrated on identifying the words that would prove most resonant with the American public. Now, in his message book "Straight Talk," Luntz brings his dark arts to the task of helping Republicans package themselves as concerned about the environment without actually having to be concerned.
On the Precautionary Principle
Where medical knowledge goes, perhaps environmental policy should follow. Over the past half century, as we know, modern medicine has increasingly emphasized a proactive, preventive approach to bodily affliction. Better to cut cholesterol, the thinking goes, than to call the heart surgeon. The same thinking underlies a recent concept in ecology called the “precautionary principle,” which aims at identifying environmental risks and implementing policies that will head off environmental damage before it occurs.
