I just read this very interesting article by Michael Specter on the New Yorker website. He talks at length about approaches to climate change through markets, technology, legislation, and more. There are counter-intuitive facts to digest, like how apples shipped from New Zealand might have a smaller carbon footprint than ones grown in the US (same with French wine versus domestic — it’s in how it’s grown, and how it’s shipped). It’s fascinating reading.
It seems like every time I starting thinking about climate change, the doomsday feeling inevitably sets in. There’s a sense of urgency, which is good, but it can feel crippling, like nothing we try to do will have enough of an effect, and future generations are doomed. There’s a quote I liked near the end of the article that addresses this feeling a bit, and how we might deal with it.
The trouble with you environmentalists is that you see a problem coming and you slam your foot on the brakes and try and steer away from the chasm. The problem is that it often doesn’t work. Maybe the thing to do is jam your foot on the pedal and see if you can just jump across.
Read the article for the context, obviously, but I will say that it’s not referring to emitting more carbon and hoping we can reverse the effects. The goal is to just encourage a lot of involvement from as many sectors as possible, and see if we can’t have a big and important impact. I do feel like enough people with active minds are looking into climate change and what can be done about it that there’s a great deal of reason to hope.
Certainly I’d expect things to improve here to a degree (maybe a large one) once we have a new president next year. Obama, Clinton, or McCain could be a substantial improvement over Bush with regard to environmental leadership. (I hope it ends up being Obama, but we’ll see.)
Incidentally, I found the article courtesy of the excellent Foreign Policy blog. I read it every day, and find it a tremendous resource.
I’d like to make a quick mention of something that is definitely not torture. Far from it. Lisa and I went to see Whirled News Tonight, one of many groups performing at iO Chicago. Chicago is the American improv capital, and everything we’ve seen here has been at least, usually really good. WNT was very good. Unlike the other shows we’ve seen at iO in the past, there was no Harold; it was all short form stuff, nothing lasting more than a few minutes. That surprised me, and was maybe a little bit of a letdown because Improv Olympic (iO’s old name) is where the Harold was invented (or at least became famous in the improv community). I’m always so impressed with the performers’ ability to tie all the threads together that it was a little bit disappointing not to see them do that tonight.
That said, the show was very good. They surprised me several times with really well timed, hilarious creations, and I laughed all over the place. I’m sure there’s bad improv happening in Chicago, but if you stick with the good ones like iO, Second City (great sketch comedy and improv), ComedySportz, and other reputable venues, it seems you can’t go wrong.
Whirled News Tonight has started a podcast as well. The first act of every show, wherein they use audience-clipped bits of the day’s papers for suggestions, is offered. I’m looking forward to downloading tonight’s show when they release it.
A former Naval officer writes about waterboarding in the Washington Post. According to him, it used to be called “water torture”. Enough said. The United States shouldn’t be doing this, or anything like it, to anyone.