Nature is not simply a technical or economical resource, and human beings are not mere numbers. To suggest that one can somehow align all the squabbling institutions of science, environmental management, government and diplomacy in an alliance of convenience to regulate the global climate seems to me optimistic.
In the rich world, the environmental situation has improved dramatically. In the United States, the most important environmental indicator, particulate air pollution, has been cut by more than half since 1955, rivers and coastal waters have dramatically improved, and forests are increasing.
I hope that in future Congresses there will reemerge a recognition that climate change is a reality, that our policies to meet our energy needs must also deal responsibly with environmental issues, including the damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality – what a joke. In my district, we caught them lying to us about the results of air quality studies in the Barnett Shale. They are playing with the health and safety of our communities, and we are going to tell them that is not acceptable.
As the world’s ‘most dynamic’ cities seek to manage their own urban growth, American state and local officials have much to offer. Our mayors can share their experiences in urban design, clean energy projects, Smart Grids, codes for energy efficient buildings, transportation safety, and innovative environmental solutions.
I’d been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it’s environmental, without the customary narrative and episodic quality that music normally has. I called this ‘ambient music.’ But at the same time I was trying to make visual art become more like music, in that it changed the way that music changes.
We always hear from newspapers that while people understand the environmental challenge, they are unwilling to stomach the solutions. The trouble is, we only ever hear about the solutions from the media, and for whatever reason, they are almost always caricatured beyond recognition. If there’s no appetite for green, it’s not surprising.
Climate change is not a discrete issue; it’s a symptom of larger problems. Fundamentally, our society as currently designed has no future. We’re chewing up the planet so fast, in so many different ways, that we could solve the climate problem tomorrow and still find that environmental collapse is imminent.
Politicians usually get the blame for dragging their feet on environmental issues. And fair enough. Most of them do just that. But the blame isn’t theirs alone. For politicians afraid of losing votes, a bristling media waiting to transform good green ideas into monsters is a colossal disincentive.
Politics colours everything, and anyone who wants change is necessarily political. As an environmental campaigner more or less since I left school in the early ‘90s, I have always been involved in lobbying, campaigning and pushing for changes.
Incredibly, oil and gas companies don’t have to pay certain environmental costs that amount to small change to them, while an offshore wind project start-up is faced with fees that could mean the difference between building a wind farm and packing up and going home.
The way to make the world a better place, through your eating, is simply to eat a bit less meat. Local is sometimes good, sometimes bad. But even when it’s good, its environmental impact is relatively small compared to other possible improvements.
Transparency, accountability and sustainability have become the slogans of the market leaders. Companies carry out environmental and social audits to court the consumer, and even the bluest chips woo organisations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty.
The Moon stabilizes Earth’s obliquity. Well, almost. The tilt actually varies between 22 and 24.5 degrees – and the variation is enough to induce such environmental inconveniences as the occasional ice age. Without the Moon, it might be much worse.
Determining the value of individual texts has been an ideological scuffle in literary criticism for centuries: but the environmental cost of printing them hauls this dispute from the ivory tower into day-to-day decision-making. Is it right to write? The publishing industry is slowly beginning to commit to using sustainably harvested trees.
Innate mechanisms endow the visual system with highly specific connections, but visual experience early in life is necessary for their maintenance and full development. Deprivation experiments demonstrate that neural connections can be modulated by environmental influences during a critical period of postnatal development.
If we’re going to pass international trade agreements, as we should, they should have similar kind of rules, not as high a wage as obviously as a steelworker in the U.S. or in Lorain, Ohio, but certainly rules on the environment and worker safety. You go to Mexico, you don’t see those kinds of worker protections or environmental safeguards.
Meat is a mighty contributor to climate change and other environmental problems. The amount of meat we’re eating is one of the leading causes of climate change. It’s as important as the kind of car you drive – whether you eat meat a lot or how much meat you eat.
I don’t think that VR is going to lead to humanity being enslaved in the matrix or letting the world crumble around us. I think it’s going to end up being a great technology that brings closer people together, that allows for better communication, that reduces a lot of environmental waste that we’re currently doing in the real world.
There’s every reason to think that whatever their political leanings, Americans will be highly receptive to numerous reforms designed to improve health, safety, economic security, environmental quality and democratic self-government – at least if those reforms do not eliminate their freedom of choice.
Every day, the hard-working men and women of Alabama’s Department of Environmental Management are on the ground, protecting Alabama’s rivers and lakes in a way that is beneficial to all. EPA should support them in that work, not make it more difficult.
My mates Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe have put together thirty one episodes of a really really nice podcast at Rice as part of the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The ‘Cultures of Energy Podcast’ is so good!
We had a great chance in the mid-2000s to reach an accord with the Chinese on both energy and environmental issues. That deal would have essentially been that the U.S. could provide the equipment and expertise, and the Chinese would help close the trade gap. It was a huge opportunity that we failed to exploit.
Our message to leaders from every continent was simple: California has succeeded on climate and clean energy because we’ve emphasized local, human values and built a coalition that includes community and environmental leaders, working families, and communities of color – as well as unions and progressive business.
No major technological change has ever been instituted by mankind without an array of negative consequences. The motor car has meant liberation for millions, but it has also caused congestion, environmental damage, and a disturbing death toll on the roads.
I do think that if people are taking the time to think about their environmental footprint when it comes to how many flights they take, whether or not they have a 4X4, whether or not they are going to have a patio heater, then putting the question to themselves about how many kids they are going to have is a reasonable thing to do.
