GreenHumanist

Why TV Weather Forecasters Don't Believe in Climate Change

2010-01-25T06:27:00.000-08:00

The Columbia Review of Journalism just published an intriguing study about TV weather forecasters and their skepticism concerning anthropogenic climate change. (http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/hot_air.php?page=all) It is certainly worth reading.

A salient point here is that the American public trusts their weather forecasters on this subject even though most forecasters have no, or minimal, training in climatology. Moreover, weather forecasters themselves don't believe in climate science, but they don't actually know any of the science; they just don't think it is likely. So, the situation is this: TV meteorologist don't believe in a science they haven't studied but then teach it to the public who is persuaded by the TV authority who actually isn't an authority. This is the ignorant leading the ignorant to ignorance. Shouldn't there be some standards?

Combatting Depression

2010-01-09T07:33:00.000-08:00

The GreenHumanist is depressed. The incivility of public life has reached a new nadir, it seems. Each day, I read a new story about various environmental challenges we face. And each day, I read reactions to such stories that convey deep suspicion, animosity, and disbelief. (For instance, witness the developing story about CIA satellites collecting environmental data and the reaction.)

If such reactions were rare, I wouldn't be as depressed.
If such reactions were a difference of interpretation of evidence, I wouldn't be as depressed.
If such reactions were only a result of different political values, I would be as depressed.

Instead, though, they often deliberately mislead readers/viewers, offer known lies and misdirections as facts, and dishonestly confuse issues and differences. There is an enormous difference between saying, "I believe in minimal national government and so I'm reluctant to increase the monitoring powers of the Environmental Protection Agency." And, "Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Marxists who run this country." (For some examples, see: this or this, or this, or this, or this.)

The GreenHumanist is an enormous fan of democracy. I celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the National Environmental Policy Act this month, because that law created avenues for the public to comment. As such, decisions about land use were no longer focused in the hands of a few special interests (e.g., timber companies, ranchers, industry). Instead, the public, activists, and scientists were given opportunities to learn of, question, and challenge plans to dam rivers, increase the timber cutting quotas, and site a toxic waste dump in my neighborhood or yours.

Because I like democracy, I do not call for the end of public discussion or debate about these central matters for the environment and our life within those webs of life. I do call on those of you who care about the environment to step up in the public debate with civility, even when confronted with incivility. I would urge you to use real-life case studies of environmental harm be it pollution, erosion, or environmental racism. I hope you would use honesty and compassion (and facts).

Ultimately, we will not solve global environmental crises by more science. (This is a major premise behind this blog.) It requires cultural changes. One change can come through increasing civility in public debate and not rising to the green-baiting tactics of the deniers of environmental problems. This will require creativity and patience, the latter being especially difficult in times of crisis. Yet, without it, we become as shrill and as anti-democratic as those who would deny us our legitimacy. We cannot sink so low. (And, of course, none of this is to say that we should not work to build a grassroots social movement.)

5 Green Resolutions for 2010 | Cool Green Science: The Conservation Blog of The Nature Conservancy

2010-01-04T08:24:00.001-08:00

Check out these five Green Resolutions. Fairly modest, to be sure. If everyone committed to five Green Resolutions, the impact might end up being noticeable at the local scale anyhow. What have you resolved?

5 Green Resolutions for 2010 | Cool Green Science: The Conservation Blog of The Nature Conservancy

Posted using ShareThis

A New Year, Another Blog

2010-01-02T08:52:00.000-08:00

The GreenHumanist has been AWOL for far too long. Perhaps in the New Year I will post more regularly. In fact, I’d make that a New Year’s Resolution, but those seldom seem to work, do they? My work is likely to be ramped up even more, but much of it will be of direct interest to this blog’s purpose. That might mean more posts.

In the meantime, you might check out the best and worst of 2009 (and the decade) by Treehugger.com.

The GreenHumanist continues to believe that the earth faces a global environmental crisis. The nature of that crisis remains unbelievably complex. Understanding it and working to resolve it demands the most creative thinking we can muster. Fundamentally, too, it requires cultural change among those societies that have done the most to cause the problems all global citizens face. Since cultural change is almost never driven by science or engineering, the GreenHumanist encourages a greater presence of humanities scholars in environmental debates.

Business and Environmental Sustainability

2009-10-04T15:02:00.000-07:00

As the GreenHumanist wrote before, the business of business and the environment is a critical and paradoxical one. Capitalism is often cited as the driving force of ecological havoc. Certainly, countless examples show capitalism as often damaging. (Socialism and communism were no picnics for nature, either.) However, capitalism and big industrial economies are unlikely to disappear. It becomes imperative, then, for businesses to step up and make changes.

Many politicians and executives make it seem as though greening their practices will destroy the U.S. or global economy instantaneously. This, of course, is ridiculous. A strong economy must be a green economy.

Hunter Lovins, co-author of Natural Capitalism, is among the leading thinkers in this area. She and allies have begun making in-roads with large corporations. (Listen to an interview with her here.) This posting by Corey W. deVos explores some of the successes and ways that being better capitalists--namely, by reducing waste--will be better for the Earth. One example: DuPont--certainly not the poster-company for environmental responsibility--reduced carbon emissions by 65% ahead of schedule and is saving about $2.2 billion annually.

This is interesting for several reasons. One, businesses are taking action, despite what we sometimes are led to believe. Two, they are doing so without governmental regulation, something we have often thought is necessary to initiate significant action. Three, profitability is not declining in businesses as they make environmental responsibility a hallmark. The next time you hear that businesses are all bad, that government regulation is necessary, or that greening business will mean declining economic output, you can counter such charges. They are simply lies.

To be certain, economic growth cannot go on forever. Endless growth is not sustainable. I am persuaded that a steady-state economy is a better hope for the world's sustainability. Yet, promoting economic efficiency, which will mean minimizing ecological impacts, is a step that must be taken. Beginning yesterday.

Reminder: International Day of Action is 24 October

2009-09-21T18:29:00.000-07:00

With the latest focus on health care reform and the ubiquitous celebrity shenanigans, it is sometimes easy to forget about the on-going efforts to combat climate change--the most critical cause of our generation and the next for our planet.

350.org has launched the International Day of Action for 24 October. The organization is increasing its activism to demand better global warming action from policymakers and business leaders.

Pay attention in your local communities to see if there are events you can support (you can find these on the website). 350.org created an effective presentation you can download and use at your Day of Action at www.350.0rg/presentation.

For those of you desiring some explanation of the science, check out http://co2now.org/. In addition, there are still skeptics about various points out there. This website takes several of those points and examines them rigorously: http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/.

What are you doing about it?

Where Has the GreenHumanist Been?; Power of Place

2009-09-19T18:56:00.000-07:00

Where did August go? Where did most of September go? Without deadlines, it has become too easy to let this blog slump. With a little more dedication and a little less travel, the blog will be updated more regularly in the coming months.

One reason the GreenHumanist has not been active is travel to far away places. In August, I hiked in the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area in Washington's Cascade Mountains. Below is a photo from my campsite. It was a challenging hike but well worth to have views like this. It was a reminder that occasionally (or much more often) we need to get out, Out, OUT of our heads and into places.

A few weeks later for a conference, I traveled to Iqaluit (map) in Nunavut (which is in Canada for those you don't know). No one would miss the airport:

As part of the conference, we were able to spend an afternoon at Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park. A remarkable place for a "southerner" like me. (Nearly everyone's a southerner to those in Iqaluit!)

These photos give a sample of the landscape of southern Baffin Island.

Being in a place so distant, meeting with Inuit, listening respectfully to elders, connecting with other humanists--together, these made the trip quite exciting and wholly worthwhile. I'm afraid it did not spark any particularly useful insights for this blog, other than reinforcing that the power of place--its landscape and culture combined over time--is among the most humbling teachers of all. How easy we forget that when we buzz to and fro in our suburban/urban/exurban lives in temperate climes.

Sustainability, Wal-Mart, and the Paradox of Consumerism

2009-07-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

The GreenHumanist read a provocative article yesterday. Bill Baue of Sea Change Media wrote the piece entitled, "Walmart and Sustainability--Oxymoron, Salvation, or Both?."

Baue focuses on an interesting paradox when it comes to sustainability and consumerism. In short, he analyzes sustainability advocates' arguments. One side sees the reduction or transformation of modern consumerism as key to reaching sustainability. That is, we must not buy, not produce, not consume so many products. Reorganize the way the economy works away from mass consumerism.

The other side sees that as unrealistic. Since it seems unlikely that the consumer basis of our modern economy will be changing, this side argues that we need to adjust that economy toward sustainability. Wal-Mart has changed all its lightbulbs, for instance. What prompted Baue's article is Wal-Mart's recent release of the Sustainability Product Index (linked in the article) so that consumers can see the impact of each product. Since Wal-Mart is the largest retailer, its activities can have an enormous impact. The corporate giant is betting that its changes to its stores and supply line and making sustainability information available will lead to a more sustainable economy and make green-conscious consumers make better decisions. Wal-Mart could, then, be a leader in sustainability.

Baue's own conclusion is that (a) he believes we need to change our economy away from consumerism and constant economic growth but (b) that is unlikely so we should be glad for Wal-Mart's efforts and encourage other corporations to do more for sustainability. That's a realist perspective.

It got me thinking, though. Should I buy the more sustainably produced and distributed product sold in a green(er) store? Or, should I pass on the purchase altogether? Having read more economists this past year than in the rest of my life combined, I have become persuaded that the market can be an enormously powerful tool toward a sustainable world, but it doesn't work perfectly. Baue's realist perspective might be the best we can hope for. At least for now.

Faith and Nature

2009-07-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

In 1967, historian Lynn White Jr. famously (notoriously?) published "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis" in Science. He concluded that Christianity was the foundation of modern society's relationship with nature because it separated humans from nature and because God commanded humans in Genesis to have dominion over the rest of creation. For many critics of so-called Western civilization, White hit the nail squarely on the head. For many others, White was overly selective in his reading of the Bible, not seeing alternative interpretations, and ignoring the legion of environmental problems in non-Christian societies.

Despite the place of science in environmental sustainability, faith matters in these efforts. (Since the GreenHumanist is a North American, largely surrounded by Judeo-Christians, this blog will focus on that faith.) This blog is not meant to analyze, support, or criticize White's claims but to offer some examples for those so inclined to see the Judeo-Christian tradition in different ways and to furnish a few examples from history.

White himself highlighted St. Francis of Assisi as an example within the Christian tradition--as founder of the Franciscan Order--of one who could see God's work in all Creation. St. Francis famously preached to the birds. White nominated St. Francis as patron saint of ecologists.

Closer to home, John Muir (the nearest thing Americans have to a patron saint of environmentalism) rejected, or more properly adapted, his father's strict Campbellite religious convictions. He developed instead a passionate, evangelical Christianity that saw in nature an egalitarian reflection of God's love. My favorite passage of Muir's comes from a letter to a schoolteacher friend in 1872 where he wrote: "We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all." To Muir, God had not granted dominion to humans over nature. Instead, God had created the world with all creatures being morally equal. Such was the radicalism of Muir's faith.

Disturbed by White's claims in his Science essay, Wendell Berry, one of the America's greatest agrarian writers, published an impassioned essay in The Gift of Good Land (1981) that offered a different perspective from White's. To Berry, God offered the Promised Land to humans but placed conditions on that gift. That land must be inherited by successive generation, unharmed. The Creation was a gift but was not meant to be used without great care. It must be cared for; it must be stewarded. This stewardship principle is perhaps the most influential one today within Judeo-Christian communities interested in intermingling faith and nature.

My last example comes from the United Church of Christ (UCC), a mainline Protestant denomination. In 1987, the UCC published a scathing report, Toxic Wastes and Race: A National Report on the Racial and Socio-E conomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites. This report revealed a pervasive correlation between racial minorities, poverty, and the presence of toxic waste. That is, if you were poor and/or African American or Latino or American Indian, you were significantly more likely to live within close range of toxic waste and its attendant health issues. This issue, now widely known as environmental racism or environmental (in)justice, had been comparatively ignored by mainstream environmental organizations. That it took a report by a church speaks volumes about the power of faith. Two years ago, the UCC published an updated report.

These days many Judeo-Christian communities are stepping up to make environmental stewardship an important part of their missions. Climate change, in particular, has become an issue that some conservative Christians have felt called to address. Books by prominent environmentalists that explore the religious components to the problems and solutions to ecological problems, like E. O. Wilson's The Creation, are reaching new audiences.

One thing typically missed in discussing Lynn White's argument is that he concluded if religion was at the root of the problem, it was also at the root of the solution. It is useful to remember that. So, if you are a member of a faith community, urge it to engage in reformulating its relationship to the Earth.

New Poll and Upcoming Post

2009-07-15T09:05:00.000-07:00

The GreenHumanist has been busy reading, writing, and neglecting this blog.

I have just added a new poll (to the right). Please mark your choice. The last poll only included two votes, so I'm hoping for a better response this month.

Also, the GreenHumanist has been thinking about a post on environmentalism and faith. I hope to blog it within a few days. Check back soon.

Climate Change and Social Movements

2009-06-24T06:48:00.000-07:00

Global Climate Change.

This is the cause of the generation, we're often told. If so, we might expect a public debate like other causes of different generations. Thus, history might be instructive.

Largely, it has not been the case that climate change has exhibited similar dynamics of other movements. The GreenHumanist, someone with a keen interest and some expertise in history, has wondered why that is. There are numerous reasons.

One is scale; climate change will affect the globe (some areas more than others) and so traditional governance mechanisms do not work. Besides geographic and political scale, temporal scale matters. Climate change rarely affects populations tomorrow or next year; instead, it threatens working ecosystems over the long-term. Rarely have political or social movements attacked such a problem with such a long view. (And there are few political rewards for policymakers to act now to help future generations who don't vote.)

Also, there are not widely accepted principles that undergird the issues that cross the political spectrum. The movements to abolish slavery in antebellum America or to promote civil rights from the 1950s through the 1970s could appeal to broad democratic principles. Even much of the environmental movement of thd 1960s and 1970s centered on democratic participation of the public in environmental decision-making. There are general principles for climate change, such as the belief that our species does not have the right to despoil the Earth. Yet, such a ecocentric view is not widely accepted.

The issue of "enemies" also lacks here. The enemies of civil rights were clear: Bull Connor, George Wallace, and Ku Klux Klan members. With clear enemies, it was easier to protest their actions. The perpetrators of global climate change are more diffuse. They are us in our fossil fuel usage. They are businesses that expend great amounts of energy and pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, the economic growth that does so much to harm the environment also helps lift many people out of poverty, which is critical to stabilizing global population and environmental damage. So, the lack of unambiguous enemies prevents massive mobilization against them.

There are many other reasons why this movement appears unlike previous ones.

But maybe this is changing. An article on TreeHugger.com today announces a new tactic. The story is about a letter written by twenty scientists to President Obama urging stronger presidential leadership on this issue. (The letter is worth reading; click the link.) T reeHugger also discusses acts of civil disobedience concerning mountaintop removal for coal by prominent public figures; ramping up the protests suggests greater traction of the climate issue and might mean we are poised to move in new directions.

Congressional debates. Public calls for greater leadership. Civil Disobedience. (Blogs?) These may be signs that climate change could be evolving as a social and political movement. But because this issue is different from earlier causes, it will likely require new types of action.

Stories of Global Warming--a new book

2009-06-22T17:59:00.001-07:00

The Union of Concerned Scientists released a new free, online book today. It is called Thoreau's Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming, launched with Penguin Classics's help. It includes a passionate Foreword by writer Barbara Kingsolver that is certainly worth reading. The anthology includes several short essays/stories by Americans from all stripes. As a free resource, this is a terrific book to read.

Resilience

2009-06-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

Resilience is a concept that ecologists began examining in the 1970s. Despite that relative longevity, it has not become as mainstream as they might have expected. Nevertheless, as with many scientific concepts, resilience has expanded and been adopted more widely. I can hardly read a book or listen to a podcast these days concerning either environmental problems or global relations or governance without coming across it. A World of Possibilities recently produced a terrific podcast about the concept.

Canadian ecologist C. S. Holling is perhaps the leading proponent of this idea. The concept is rather simple: resilience is a measure of how well a natural system can respond to some perturbation. If an ecosystem is resilient, it will bounce back--or successfully--adapt to the disturbance. If an ecosystem is not resilient, it will crash. Predictably, one characteristic of resilient ecosystems are intact ecological relationships. Not surprisingly, ecologists
or natural resource managers hope to limit economic and other human activities from severing those relationships so that ecosystems will survive and adapt to change. Too many disturbances can make environments unable to persist.

Unlike most scientists, Holling pushed his ideas beyond his field. Perhaps more accurately, Holling expanded his ecosystem thinking to complex systems more generally. Thus, any complex system--a corporation, a bureaucracy, a government, a society--would behave in some patterned ways. Consequently, human complex systems also needed to be resilient--or adaptive (see previous GreenHumanist post)--to survive in today's modern, technological, complex world. And that requires building and nurturing relationships, local, regional, national, and global. (For links to some of Holling's most influential scientific and theoretical papers, go here.)

Today, the GreenHumanist finished reading Joshua Cooper Ramo's, The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It (Little, Brown, 2009).

It's a fascinating book that uses resilience to discuss global crises (and how to ameliorate them), including banking crashes, terrorism, corporate restructuring, disease outbreaks, and more. Ramo calls for "Deep Security" as a way to combat the often terrifying world we inhabit. (This concept builds on a similar concept by Bill McKibben in Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.) Building resilience into our institutions, Ramo shows, can allow us to adapt and thrive in the face of coming threats. Moreover, he argues passionately that building "Deep Security" will reduce much the terror in the world. I hope he's correct.

So, add "resilience" to your toolbox for changing the world and creating a culture of sustainability.

Sustainability by Design: Changing to a Culture of Sustainability

2009-06-18T17:49:00.001-07:00

The GreenHumanist, like most of those who work in the environmental humanities these days, is keenly interested in sustainability. That is a slippery term that can mean just about anything. (We'll save a dissection of it for another day.) Lately, the GreenHumanist has been reading John R. Ehrenfeld’s Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy for Transforming Our Consumer Culture (Yale, 2008) to get another take on sustainability, defined there in more than economic or ecological terms but practically as a synonym for "flourishing." It is a useful book (though with some writing problems that detract from the message, in my opinion) that I recommend for several reasons.

One, the author identifies several cultural barriers of our modern society to achieving sustainability. Indeed, Ehrenfeld suggests that our modern worldview is inherently unsustainable. For illustration, he contrasts cultural characteristics of an unsustainable culture (left) with those of a sustainability culture (right). Some examples:

Reductionist vs. Interconnected
Atomistic vs. Holistic
Efficiency vs. Equity/Justice
Disenchantment vs. Enchantment
Techno-optimism vs. Techno-skepticism
Anthropocentric vs. Biocentric
Rationalistic vs. Intuitive
Individualistic vs. Communitarian

Although these values are not entirely clear without the full context of the book, they offer a useful snapshot of comparative values. Where do you fit? What do you most value?

Two, he suggests a variety of strategies to ameliorate unsustainable practices. I cannot provide all the details, but much of it depends on designing products and institutions to promote what Ehrenfeld calls “presencing.” We need to "presence" because our modern, technological world distances us from cause and effect (e.g., food in the US travels about 2,500 miles; few people know where their waste goes, etc.) The basic premise is that if we become more self-conscious about the impacts of our behavior, we will choose better, more sustainable actions; and we can become more self-conscious if things were designed to create “presencing.” One example he uses is a space heater that does not evenly pump out heat into a room but only in a certain direction. It would require you to carefully position it so the heat is directly only at the people rather than wasting energy heating unoccupied spaces. Another example is a two-button toilet; by having to choose whether you need more or less water, the toilet forces you to think, to be “present” for a moment and consider the impact of your choice.

But the ideas go beyond mere technological changes. Ehrenfeld suggests that businesses, managing agencies, and government might create more adaptive mechanisms to strive for sustainability. Building on scholars of adaptive management in resource fields, he calls for adaptive governance. Adaptive management was an important new paradigm in natural resource management a decade or two ago and is currently expanding in other areas of governance. (A nice description of this in practice is found in the final chapter of Nancy Langston’s Where Land and Water Meet [Washington, 2003] about the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon). Adaptive governance is evolving, so standards and definitions are not universal. At minimum, though, it requires what might be referred to as the four Ps: public participation, precautionary principle, pragmatism, and patience.

So, how does a GreenHumanist fit into all this? What I like about Sustainability by Design is that Ehrenfeld—an engineer—recognizes that our environmental problems derive ultimately from ways of knowing and behaving. Thus, the solutions must come significantly from changing our culture and not just our technology. He is just the most recent scientist I have read who has come to recognize that our solutions require much more than science and engineering. (James Gustave Speth’s recent work, The Bridge at the Edge of the World, is another good example of this.) No one is arguing that we can stop doing scientific research to understand our global ecological problems or that we should stop technological development aimed at mitigating environmental issues. But so much of the current debate, especially on climate change, defers to further scientific studies and certainty or relies on future technological innovation to save us from ourselves. By deferring to more science or a future technical solution, we are not doing the hard work of changing the more fundamental problems, which are largely rooted in culture. (I am not arguing we must entirely overturn all of our culture, either; perhaps a later blog will show ways we can build on existing traditions to create a culture of sustainability.)

This analysis of Sustainability by Design only scratches the surface of this provocative work. Consider reading it and seeing how it speaks to you. In the meantime, visit Ehrenfeld's own blog, Sustainability by Design.

New 350.org video

2009-06-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

Check out the new 350.org video on YouTube. Spread the news.

(And please vote on my poll about climate change on the right-hand side of the screen.)

350.org and global climate action

2009-06-13T15:50:00.000-07:00

Environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben is spearheading a global action focusing the world's attention on climate change. 350.org is designed to draw attention to the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen with a series of worldwide actions on 24 October 2009.

The number 350, of course, refers to the parts per million of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere that scientists have determined as an upper limit. (For a simpler explanation, go here.)

Go to 350.org. And watch the video below.

What will you and your family and your community do to raise awareness and demand fundamental change?

Podcasts

2009-06-13T11:45:00.001-07:00

Recently, I have been listening to several informative podcasts related to environmental issues. Below are some examples with links to the websites from which you can subscribe.

A World of Possibilities
Earthbeat Radio
Seminars about Long-Term Thinking (SALT)
Sea Change Radio

I encourage you to check out these podcasts. Please leave a comment with other suggestions, too.

About the GreenHumanist Blog

2009-06-13T08:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the GreenHumanist Blog!

The GreenHumanist is an experiment, and I have little idea how it will evolve or how often it will change.

I am academic in what might be called the environmental humanities. I have taught at the college and university level for more than a decade; published a couple books and dozens of articles, essays, and reviews; and followed ecological concerns for years. I have kept my concerns about the the environmental crisis mostly to myself and to friends. Recently, though, I have felt a strong moral imperative that we all must act and do what we can to solve the problems plaguing the globe and humans' relationship to it. This blog is one effort to spread the word, as well as to offer links and commentaries on resources, ideas, and others' writings.

My teaching, research, and thinking has led me to conclude that global environmental problems are deeply embedded in cultural and social norms. Solving them will require a humanistic perspective, as well as scientific and other views. Although improving the human-nature relationship will require government and markets and technology and science, I believe it mostly requires deep cultural changes. The GreenHumanist will primarily focus on the human and cultural side to understanding and ameliorating global ecological problems.

The GreenHumanist welcomes your comments.