Archives for Getting to Green

Sustainability.

Dr. Rendell’s comments are all well and good but if the politicians ignore the substance of sustainability and go for broke then we will break the back of sustainability and cripple the future. We face a future in which we will have destroyed a managed environment — managed that is by NATURE over millions of years. Climate change is being brought about by profligate waste for very short term gain. We will pay the price in the time yet to come.

Graham Cliff, at 8:00 am EDT on June 3, 2008

What are you paid to teach?

“If I were full-time faculty, maybe “success” would consist in imbuing my students with an in-depth understanding of all the complexity of Earth’s climate system, and just how human behavior has subverted the ability of that system to self-regulate.”

You should only do this if you’re either teaching atmospheric science or a class studying all aspects of climate change, man-made and natural. Otherwise, you’re not teaching what you’re getting paid to teach and students suffer from not learning the material in the subject matter.

If you teach English and start talking about Earth’s climate, I’m out the door in a heartbeat.

Robert, PhD Student, at 8:10 am EDT on June 6, 2008

If Robert is a grad student preparing for qualifying exams, dissertation, defense — and ultimately a position as an academic with a Ph.D. in a field like English, he means that if a class is on, say, Milton, the course content should be about that author and, in rather broader terms, the historical period, Milton’s literary contemporaries, his predecessors, his influence, the culture of England at the time, etc. ...and not on current environmental issues and debates.

That’s not to say that R. (and all of us) should not also be aware of those latter issues and debates and work toward sustainability in the here and now.

John McMahon, at 10:10 am EDT on June 8, 2008

Chicken-pluckers

The tone of this article is condescending toward the migrant laborers, building a class distinction between them and the “skilled” workers. The point of the article, though, is not well taken. The unskilled laborers coming in illegally tend to use more electricity, fossil fuels, etc., than they did in their home countries, quite possibly doubling their “carbon footprints” just like the skilled laborers. It is the infrastructure into which they have migrated that is at issue, not the type of work they do. They tend to use air-conditioning and all the other “benefits” of life in the US to a greater extent than they might have had they stayed “home.”

Cal, at 9:35 am EDT on June 11, 2008

And, since I grow my own tomatoes in the upper Midwest, I can enjoy a fresh tomato when they aren’t in stores.

Robert, PhD Student, at 8:25 pm EDT on June 11, 2008

Life Skills and Basic Needs

Two books that will arouse serious contemplation on starting your own farm and provide important information on our industrial agricultural systems’ synergistic destruction of community, quality, and health. Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” are excellent examples of the forcing of our linear, industrial processes on a fundamental basic need of growing food.

Stephen Muzzy, Program Manager at Second Nature, at 10:55 am EDT on June 12, 2008

UK SUVs

I assume the 41.5 mpg UK SUV is a diesel, which has its own set of problems.

Todd Diacon, at 7:00 am EDT on June 23, 2008