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Women, energy, and voting

By November 6, 2012
votepage1

It was a pretty disappointing presidential campaign by the two major parties given that neither talked about my key issues — peak oil and global warming — with any passion or consistency. Both major parties seem content to avoid what are essentially the two toughest challenges today and going into the future. The issue behind all issues Yes, there's been plenty of red meat from both sides on social issues such as abortion, contraception, gay marriage. And it's important for women to stand … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , ,

Portrait of a climate science denier: Piers Corbyn

By August 20, 2012
Banksy I don't believe

I've got better things to do than write about climate science deniers. I could schedule a proctological exam. Or listen to Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits enough times to memorize the words to "Can't Smile Without You." Or ask a teenage girl to explain why The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part Two will be the most awesome film made since Au revoir les enfants. Yet, if you care about energy and the environment, it's impossible to avoid the handiwork of climate science deniers online. I try … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , , ,

Letting go

By June 26, 2012
hands

We spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and treasure in imposing our will on nature … dreaming of permanent solutions, monuments to our ambitions and dreams. But in periods of slack, decline, or collapse, our abilities no longer suffice for all this management. We have to let things go. – Ernest Callenbach This summer, I'm on an odyssey to five unique intentional communities and ecovillages, including the original hippie commune, Virginia's Twin Oaks, and two communities in Missouri, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Spirit Tagged With: , ,

La vie en verte (a life in green)

By June 18, 2012
Marion Cotillard

At the 80th Academy Award ceremony in 2008, the nominations for Best Actress included Cate Blanchett, Julie Christie, Laura Linney, and Ellen Page; all actresses that American audiences were relatively familiar with. But when Forest Whitaker tore open the famous white envelope and called out “And the Oscar goes to...Marion Cotillard!” many viewers at home likely hesitated with their applause. She had come out of nowhere. Her film, La Vie en Rose, had not been widely released in … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Arts, Small World Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Teaching climate change denial

By March 1, 2012
Never Mind the Science

Why would an organization call itself  The Heartland Institute (HI)? To me the heartland of America is our country’s center – the Midwest and the Great Plains. The stereotype of this region arouses pictures of farm country, where good, honest, hardworking folks lead sober, unsophisticated lives. My suspicion is that the HI would like to piggyback on the values just described. This is, of course, a subliminal message which goes unstated on their website. There you'll find them saying … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

#26: Nonpartisan but NOT apolitical

By December 6, 2011
Reason 26

Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Nuclear rule American energy policy along with an even larger posse of corporate plutocrats who exercise far too much influence inside the Beltway. None of them seem inclined to give up their hold on Washington. Nor are they troubled by operating free from accountability to the American people. Their henchmen in Congress appear unbothered by this, too. Money in politics has never been as bad as it is now, which is leading to a raft of wretched policies, from a new … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , ,

Calloused but not broken: Walking Away From Empire

By September 28, 2011
Feet

Guy McPherson’s latest gift, Walking Away From Empire: A Personal Journey, is a necessary tonic, or more aptly perhaps, a high colonic, for those who have ears but refuse to hear the story of climate change and its pervasive affect on the life of man and the world. This collection of essays proclaims loudly, and occasionally with raw emotion, that it's time we took off our cultural blinders and acknowledged the obvious facts confronting humanity and the earth. A time to be born, a time to … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Why you can’t fight climate change without peak oil

By July 25, 2011
Requiem for a Species cover

Publishers of books on climate change seem to be competing to ratchet up the doom factor in their titles. Pretty soon you can expect to see "Dr Kevorkian's Rx to Save Yourself from Climate Hell" or "Praying for Pol Pot: Genocide May Be the Only Answer." The title Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change helped draw me to Australian activist Clive Hamilton's contribution to the genre of climate Jeremiad. When it comes to gloom and doom, Hamilton doesn't … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Climate Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Mindfulness in the midst of chaos

By January 14, 2011
Dalai Lama Graffiti.

At the time of Buddha Shakyamuni, 2,500 years ago, the early Buddhist community that gathered around him was  highly sustainable, ecologically aware, and self-consciously so. In many ways it can be seen as a perfect model of how to live contentedly with very little and in harmony with nature. The monks and nuns recycled cast-aside rags to make robes. They ate with moderation, vowing to avoid food after midday. They made their retreat huts out of wooden poles and covered with natural … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Spirit Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Tune in, turn off, hang up

By December 1, 2010
Bill McKibben wants Obama to save the world through solar panels.

In 1988, as an eighth grader in Mr. Cedric A. S. Paine’s Introductory to Physical Science class, I tried to create the greenhouse effect in a two-liter Coke bottle. It kind of worked, but more importantly, the project made a powerful impact on me that remains to this day. In 1989, a writer from the Adirondacks published The End of Nature. It was the first book for a popular audience about global warming or what has come to be known as climate change, and even more recently as “global … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,