- What Does the Present Owe the Future? from Dot Earth, the New York Times’ new blog that “examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits”. From the article: “Scientists found that it would take at least 20 or 30 years for the climate to measurably ‘notice’ the difference between freezing greenhouse emissions now, or having a global fossil fuel party — with everyone jumping in Hummers and jacking up thermostats. So it is all about our legacy in the end.” 11/09/2007
Blog Action Day – Making effective transportation choices
October 15th, 2007 | Today is Blog Action Day, a day when “bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind.” This year’s issue is the environment. Participating bloggers are encouraged to write about any topic relating to environmental issues. Because I have recently been looking for a car, today I’ll be writing about making good choices in regards to transportation. To do so, I will be enlisting the help of a wonderful book called The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices.
The aforementioned book lists the following five things as “priority actions for American consumers” in regards to transportation:
Living closer to work and stores will cut down on your commute, which can significantly affect your overall health and sense of well-being while at the same time benefiting the environment.
Buying a new car sends an indirect message to auto manufacturers to keep making new cars. “When you picture that new car in your driveway, imagine instead the four tons of carbon and nearly 700 pounds of ordinary pollutants pumped into the atmosphere as a result of its manufacture.” If you do buy a new vehicle, make an effort to ↴
Choose a type of car that meets your everyday needs, and then look for the most fuel-efficient and least-polluting car in that class. I have been looking at cars for a couple of months now, and I am looking seriously at the Toyota Yaris. The 2008 model Yaris has the best fuel economy of any non-hybrid car. The idea here is this: do research! Don’t just buy a car on a whim because it looks cool; consider its impact. These sites are a good place to start: FuelEconomy.gov, GreenerCars.org, and UCSUSA.org
Create a “travel budget”, and try to reduce the amount of driving you do by 20%. Log your daily trips and odometer readings. If you reduce your driving by 20%, you’re lowering your household’s total contribution to global warming and air pollution by about 5%.
I am lucky that my church is only about 6 blocks from my house, so walking is an appropriate option. If walking or bicycling aren’t serious options, consider taking the bus or train instead of driving to lessen your impact on the environment.
- Fenway Park is getting on the “green” bandwagon. “The nation’s oldest active ballpark may vend beer in corn-starch-based cups, serve local, organic food from concession stands, add solar panels, and even initiate a new tradition: a fifth-inning recycling stretch.” 10/02/2007
- Grist.com offers an incredibly detailed list of articles called How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic which contain responses to the most common skeptical arguments about global warming. This could come in handy. 09/23/2007
- The authors of Freakonomics have a new article in The Times Magazine called “The Jane Fonda Effect”. If you haven’t read Freakonomics (and I suggest you do), this is a good introduction to their style of economic investigation and problem-solving. “[People] prefer a measurable risk to an immeasurable uncertainty. (This condition is known to economists as ambiguity aversion.) Could it be that nuclear energy, risks and all, is now seen as preferable to the uncertainties of global warming?” 09/16/2007
- The Art of Mapping on the Run discusses the impact of human activities on physically altering the planet, requiring increasingly frequent redrawing of atlases. “Some scientists focused on global environmental change say it is no surprise that atlases, in essence, are becoming autobiographical, reflecting the reality that the physical Earth is increasingly what the human species makes of it.” 09/08/2007
The World Without Us
I just ordered a book entitled The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, an “enthralling tour of the world of tomorrow [which] explores what little will remain of ancient times while anticipating, often poetically, what a planet without us would be like.”
The book and its author have been getting a lot of press lately, and not just because envisioning the future of the planet sans humanity is a fascinating topic for a book. Weisman even appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart recently.
Even if you’re not inclined to buy the book, the book’s website has a lot of cool multimedia that you can mess around with, including two videos: the first is a video slideshow of New York City without humans over the course of 15,000 years (I am immediately thinking about I Am Legend); and the second is an animation entitled Your House Without You.
Anyway, if you’re interested in learning more about the book, Salon has a great review. I hope to write a review when I am finished with it as well.
- Pork Barrel: Political metaphor for the appropriation of government spending for projects that are intended primarily to benefit particular constituents or campaign contributors. Green Pork: New term describing the appropriation of government money to projects headed by campaign contributors which combat global warming. 08/20/2007
- Leonardo DiCaprio’s new movie The 11th Hour (IMDb) is a powerful documentary which makes the case that our way of life is totally at odds with the sustainability of our planet. “It tells us the truth that nobody wants to hear: that human beings, especially greedy corporate executives and their politician cronies, are responsible for putting our planet in serious danger. If things don’t change soon, life on Earth may not survive.” 08/19/2007
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