Articles by JMG
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
All Articles
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Garret Keizer burns in anger about ‘green capitalism’
The new Harper's (June 2007) contains a stunning and powerful "Notebook" essay titled "Climate, Class, and Claptrap," by Garret Keizer -- a minister, if I recall correctly. Keizer writes as well as Wendell Berry, but with a kind of righteous anger that the more ponderous Berry tamps down. This essay is about the contradictions inherent in the environmental community's fast embrace of "green capitalism" and wondertoys.
The intestinal tipping point came for me when a contingent of students from Middlebury College (annual tuition and fees $44,330) found both the gas money and the gall to drive to the town of Sheffield (annual per-capita income $13,277) in order to lecture the provincials on their responsibility to the earth and its myriad creatures. Not to be outdone, a small private school in our area (annual tuition and fees $76,900) has challenged the wind projects as a source of noise disturbance for its special-needs students. This could actually turn the tide. Like a bookie assessing the hindquarters of horses, I've learned to place my bets with a sharp eye on tuition and fees. Don't tell me where you went to school; just tell me what it cost.
Alas, the issue is not yet available online, but like every issue of Harpers, is well worth a read at your library or newsstand. (There is also a nice series of short pieces, including one by Bill McKibben -- of Middlebury College, I seem to recall -- on what needs to be done to repair the damage after W is impeached or limps home in disgrace in 2009.)
To whet your appetite, I'll further shred my carpal tunnels to share more of this powerful piece:
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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:
