Filter & Sort
Why We Need More Public Scholars
Recently, I noted that the Canadian public seems better informed on climate change than their counterparts here in the USA. I brought the contrast up only to debunk the "it's human nature to disbelieve global warming" argument, and my timing was particularly unfortunate in that Canada was announcing its withdrawal from the Kyoto treaty just as I was writing my post.
Education from Nowhere
I'm in the process of reading William Morris's 1896 utopian novel "News from Nowhere", of which I'm sure I'll have more to say in a bit.
Don't blame human nature
According to multiple reports, the percentages of Americans who believe that (1) climate change is real and (2) humans are responsible for most of it continue to fall.
Insurers and climate change
The Hartford Courant, ever vigilant to trends seen likely to affect the insurance industry, noted that 2011 is already the year with the most billion-dollar-plus weather-related disasters in US history. This year already has twelve such incidents; the previous record-holder (2008) had only nine.
Rethinking eating, etc.
One of the challenges in trying to get folks to understand how a future can be both more sustainable and subjectively better than what we're used to is getting them to step back from what they "know" to be true. Simple basic facts like "more money is better than less money", and "efficient is better than inefficient". For some reason, most Greenback students have trouble challenging either of those ideas. (Of course, so do most Greenback faculty. And most Backboro residents. And most everybody I've ever met.)
Economists speak out
A couple of weeks ago, some economists from UMass published an open letter of support for the Occupy movements around the USA and the world. Maybe it was simply in the spirit of public scholarship, maybe it was an attempt to expiate some of the responsibility of their profession for recent failures, maybe it was just a case of having "enjoyed" about as much as they could stand. Regardless, their statement has now been signed by over 250 of their professional colleagues -- a significant portion of the profession is speaking truth to power
The worst kind of organic
I was in the supermarket yesterday, looking at organic produce. At our latitude, I can grow good sweet peppers, but hot peppers have never done well in my garden.