Environment

Naomi Klein on Copenhagen

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This sounds interesting and hopeful. It’s about how the Seattle protests of ten years ago were more anti than pro, more critical than analytical. The Copenhagen protests promise to be more grown up. Best quote:
“I hope we have grown up to become much more disobedient,” Jordan said, “because life on this world of ours may well be terminated because of too many acts of obedience.” More quotes:
The big criticism of the movement the media insisted on calling “antiglobalization” was always that it had a laundry list of grievances and few concrete alternatives.

Environment

How Rational? Rational Choice, Global Warming & Copenhagen

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“Recipe for Failure.” That’s the prediction made in the Washington Post’s glossy magazine Foreign Policy (FP) this month about the attempt to curb Global Weirding at the upcoming Copenhagen conference. FP claims the article’s author, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, is “the foreign-policy world’s leading predictioneer.” His predictions, based on rational choice theory, have by his account been stunningly successful: “According to a declassified CIA assessment, the predictions for which I’ve been responsible over the years have a 90 percent accuracy rate.” The first part of the article, listing his successes, is a good read.

Culture

Woodstock Anarchist Collective Homestead

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This is not a historical footnote. This is about next year. A friend of our family who is, I think, 22 is starting a new anarchist collective in Woodstock, NY, the town where he grew up. Chrisso Babcock just wrote us the email below. There is a new wave of young people drawn to basic human skills of growing one’s own food, building one’s own home, and creating face-to-face communities.

Environment

Would You Consider Making a Personal Environmental Commitment?

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The following emerged from our work in supporting environmental sanity, and is shared in a spirit of humility, knowing how much we all have a long distance to go to be doing all that we could and should to save the planet from the destruction to which our current economic and political system contributes, and knowing that you can probably devise an even better statement of a personal environmental commitment that more fully fits your own situation, capacities, and limitations. Personal Environmental Commitment
[ ] I will learn more of the details of the multiple levels in which we are undermining the life support systems of the planet, from overpopulation to over consumption to dumping our garbage, to destroying the air and the water, to excessive use of the resources of the planet to … endless other ways. I will work within some community of which I am a part in order to raise the issues of environmental degradation and what we can do not only as individuals but as a community to challenge our government to take all steps necessary to reduce the carbon in the air to below 350 parts per million. [ ] I will carefully follow the activities of my elected representatives in Congress to ensure that they do not adopt compromise measures which they justify as “politically realistic” but which do not adequately reflect the actual needs of the planet for immediate and drastic action to reverse all the ways in which we are destroying the life support systems upon which we, the animals, fish and birds depend.

Environment

No Impact Week

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Here’s a great project worth cluing in on: Huffington Post’s effort at helping us all to trim down our fossil fuel use (intro by Arianna Huffington here). It’s inspiration, or hook, is the guy who tried to live a zero-waste lifestyle for a year in New York City with his young family: a great story if you haven’t read it (at left). Our own Zach Dorfman, Tikkun Daily blogger and former Tikkun staffer is hard at work on HuffPo’s No Impact Week, which is this week. Zach asked us at the Tikkun office to think what we could do to trim down ourselves. We thought about it and checked off the things we are doing already.

Culture

The Yes Men Strike Again

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CNBC interrupted its usual program today for a shocking bit of breaking news: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had decided to stop opposing the Kerry-Boxer climate bill and instead “throw its weight behind strong climate legislation.” What great news! Could it be true? In this case, it wasn’t: the Chamber’s supposed about-face was concocted by the Yes Men, a clever group of activist pranksters whose new movie, “The Yes Men Fix the World,” hits theaters nationwide this week. By snookering numerous media agencies, the Yes Men managed to shift the public’s sense of the possible.

Earth-based Religions

"Global Weirding" and Public Opinion

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Earth Day 1970 found me protesting for greater environmental protections. But for many years afterwards, I figured that the issue was a no-brainer. You just don’t destroy the biosphere, the food and shelter your species depends on for survival. I put my efforts into the women’s movement instead, because there seemed to be a lot of inertia about women’s rights and society was crying out for greater gender equality. In retrospect, I was right about my second assumption — there was a lot of inertia concerning women’s rights — but I was wrong about my first — environmental action wasn’t a no-brainer after all.

Environment

Globe still warming, I'm sorry to say

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There is joy today among science skeptics who can’t stand the idea that human freedom might be curtailed by nature. Or who don’t want their profits curtailed by regulations to deal with it. Or don’t want something curtailed by anything. I can understand oil and fossil fuel fanatics hating the idea that human-generated global warming might be real. Tobacco execs didn’t like news of lung cancer for the same reason.

Environment

Rochester Police Attack Peaceful Student Protest and Other Stories (Free Speech News Roundup)

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Today’s post: a news round-up of noteworthy stories that are not being widely reported elsewhere in the mainstream media or blogging world. Police attack peaceful protesters in Rochester. This BlipTV episode appearing on buzzflash was reported by all over the board. A small cohort of students gathered in a park in Rochester to protest military recruiting practices in public schools and to demand an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. About a hundred young people waving colorful banners chanted and banged on drums while marching in a peaceful and orderly fashion down a street.