Media & Communications

Deconstructing Dinner: Bill C-474 (Protecting Farmers From Economic Harm of GE Crops)

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Deconstructing Dinner has long been at the forefront of covering anything and everything to do with the presence of genetically engineered (GE) foods…On today’s episode we’ll listen to Members of Parliament debate the issue in the House of Commons. Deconstructing Dinner also followed up with Liberal MP Francis Valeriote who supports the bill being sent to committee, but nevertheless shared many critical remarks in the House that are requiring some… deconstructing.

That Which May Be Gained: A Return to Scale, Community, and Morality

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Bound by the tangled cord of its own sins, Industrial Civilization sits immobilized — with the gun of reality pressed to its temple. Monumental changes are imminent – probably (hopefully) a swirling mix of both bad and good. In order to maintain our present sanity and maximize chances for the best possible futures, we need to both envision and embody the positive change we wish to see in the coming post-carbon era. As such, I suggest this: a return to life at a proper ‘human’ scale, the reclamation of functional human communities, and the widespread internalization and application of a true morality.

For You Were Strangers in the Land of Egypt: Preparing for a Century of Displacement

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Passover is a holiday deeply concerned with inclusion – at one point during each seder night, we open our doors and leave them open wide, and call out “let all who are hungry come and eat.” One year, teaching Hebrew School to 10 year olds, I asked them what would happen if they called out and a stranger came in and sat down. My students, largely from affluent and middle families in a leafy suburb where most strangers are likely to be much like them, were to a one deeply uncomfortable with the notion. They expressed fear at the thought of the stranger coming to their table, even surrounded by family members.

Hidden History of Cooperation in America

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Fewer and fewer people are happily employed, according to Derek Bok, former President of Harvard, in his latest book. The only thing Americans hate more than working is commuting, but when he considers how we can get happier, he suggests doing less of neither. Being an unhappy worker seems to be a normal, natural condition, but is it? Our hidden history of working together says it is not.

Web & media – Mar 30

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-Joel Salatin And Polyface Farm: Stewards of Creation
-Brian Kimmel looks to shine a light on the importance of eating locally with Ingredients at the CIFF
-The Best Film About a Plastic Bag You’ll Ever See
-Green advertising rules are made to be broken
-Watching the green screens at the Environmental Film Festival in D.C.
-Greenpeace Takes Aim at Koch Industries

“We Have Solutions in Hand: an interview with Dr. Michael Webber”

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I think we can solve this problem. If we look at it from an engineering or technical perspective, we have solutions in hand that we can build out in the next decade that would reduce our carbon dramatically. We could double our nuclear, we could double our natural gas for electric power, ramp up wind and solar dramatically while cutting back our coal use 80 percent…Just because we could do it as engineers with off-the-shelf technology that exists today within a decade does not mean that the policy, economic, or cultural hurtles are not real.

What Is a “Green Economy?”

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A green economy is an economy that imitates green plants as far as possible. Plants use scarce terrestrial materials to capture abundant solar energy, and are careful to recycle the materials for reuse. Although humans are not able to photosynthesize, we can imitate the strategy of maximizing use of the sun while economizing on terrestrial minerals, fossil fuels, and ecological services. Ever since the industrial revolution our strategy has been the opposite.

(The) Something is Rank

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In the resource depletion soup, one ingredient looms large – social equity. Equality is a function of population, social status aspirations and resources. With a small population, everyone can have reasonable equality. With unlimited resources, the same (although the amplitude generated by law of large numbers will exert outsized social pull from the top). But with large populations AND limits to resources, equity can only be reasonably attained if the activities that generate rank are not resource intensive.

“A Nighttime Letter to the Grandchildren”

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My dear ones, your generation will face a series of environmental challenges that will dwarf anything any previous generation has confronted. I’m hoping to add some insights of my own based on things I learned as a policymaker in the 1950s and ’60s, when I observed and participated in some monumental achievements and profound misjudgments. As a freshman congressman in 1955, I regrettably voted with my unanimous colleagues for the Interstate Highway Program. All of us acted on the shortsighted assumption that cheap oil was super-abundant and would always be available.

Climate & environment – Mar 29

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-California: climate change law won’t hurt economy
-Forest loss slows, as China plants and Brazil preserves
-Exclusive Excerpt: Hack the Planet
-Breaking the Growth Habit: A Q&A with Bill McKibben
-How the Conservatives dodged the climate bullet
-NASA: It is nearly certain that a new record 12-month global temperature will be sent in 2010
-The Secret of Sea Level Rise: It Will Vary Greatly by Region
-The Big Melt
-A Pioneering Biologist Discusses The Keys to Forest Conservation