Articles by JMG
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
All Articles
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What’s true in one area is often true in another
Nicholas Kristof has a great piece in today's NYT (behind the damn paywall) about why it's so hard to galvanize attention onto mass suffering.
It could be quickly converted into a piece explaining why pictures of cute polar bears -- especially cute baby polar bears -- work so much better at getting people to pay attention to environmental problems than anything that actually shows their real scope.
Hmmm, I'm going to have to stop talking about the problems inherent in jet travel as a mass problem ... now I'm thinking pictures of orphaned baby polar bears with small jets visible in the top of the photos, with a caption like:
"Why didn't someone tell us that flying to see our Mom would help drown theirs?"
Excerpts from the Kristof piece after the jump.
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A story from Tanzania
Interesting story on a Michigan State University project to help test and improve locally made solar cookers in Tanzania:
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Wind farms or poor farms?
The torpor with which we here in the U.S. are responding to strong, clear, and persistent signals that the old era -- of abundant cheap energy in a stable climate -- is ending is nothing short of astonishing.
The fact that supposedly serious people could have a debate about tourism vs. offshore wind turbines is astounding.
Implicit in such a discussion is the premise that tourism is going to continue even if we don't build a lot of ways to attain a lot of non-fossil energy.
Perhaps the best best way to understand stories like that is to consult a book outside the "environmental" section -- an oldie about what happens when people in power ignore strong, clear, and persistent signals that what they're doing isn't making it: The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman.
