Oh GOD! Why is HE here?? Is he BACK?? Who would want to listen to HIM?
Today, that bastion of Liberal NewsSpeak, the New York Times, ran a story about how even the crazy conservationists were saying that, you know, maybe this whole oil spill thing might actually be able totally overblown and hey, maybe we can get this thing cleaned up after all!
The Gulf of Mexico Foundation, basically in the same tree-hugging love fest as GreenPeace, had this to say, as quoted in the NYT:
“The sky is not falling. We’ve certainly stepped in a hole and we’re going to have to work ourselves out of it, but it isn’t the end of the Gulf of Mexico.”
A realistic, but positive take on the whole kerfuffle!
The Times didn’t bother to mention that the group in question was directly connected to the offshore drilling industry, including the people who made the rig that caught on fire and started pouring out oil. But, since Transocean, the company that owns the Deepwater Horizon rig (which rents the rigs to BP), is the paragon of virtue, we can only assume that their people are on point and that the Times was right to take them exactly at their word and not disclose anything more about them then that they were a “conservation organization”. That is what we are assuming. Settle down, you wild eyed Talking Points Memo hand-wringers. (more…)
I had hoped that one of my progressive causes (Y.I. campaign for Health Care reform, join the Facebook group.) would be concluded before we as a country got to the climate conference in Copenhagen. Not the case, unfortunately.
I am feeling a little bit behind with the debate. And I am feeling extremely frustrated that the segue into this entire thing is the “climate-gate” scandal of the leaked emails. I’ve railed on this before, and will, I’m sure, rail again, but who is being served when the national media discussion on Copenhagen is about emails being leaked? Will there be hundreds of stories written about the visible and track-able changes already happening on the coast of china, in the Texas sized trash heap in the pacific, or in the increasing size of the Sahara desert? My guess is no. As of right now, the Google count on “climate-gate” is growing exponentially. It only takes one story like this to completely muddy the waters of American perception. In that sense, then, the global warming skeptics are correct — this email story has already done more (because of the lack of information on the global scale) then anything else in the last ten years to set back the discussion of how to combat massive destruction of the environment. Let me be the first to congratulate them on a job well done! (more…)
Honestly, can anyone tell me why we would still listen to what Dick Cheney has to say?
His image is plastered on LtAG too
His face is currently (10:31pm, Thursday Evening) plastered all over the news, generally making him into a rhetorical counter to Obama. Here’s the problem: he makes things up.
Cheney, on the other hand, built a case on straw men, red herrings, and lies. In short, his speech was classic Dick Cheney, with all the familiar scowls and scorn intact. The Manichean worldview, which Cheney advanced and enforced while in office, was on full display.
Dear Dick: I’m sorry, but you failed. All of your bluster and all of your prevaricating fail to make a convincing case as to why you needed to drag America through the muck. You work in a democracy, and as such you need to realize that the people have voted against you. You controlled everything in terms of message and media for most of your eight years, but eventually the stark reality, the facts of what you had wrought, knocked you off your perch. You have no one to blame but yourself!
Ok, so why is this on LtAG?
Because I am interested as to why Cheney gets equal airtime to the President, and is viewed as speaking against him with an equal voice. At what point does what hashappened — I’m going to call this “reality” — start to make a difference?
Again, this all has to do with Global Warming. It all has to do with the fact that everyone is used to having the GOP out there as “equal and opposite” to the Democratic party, so both view points are given equal time. That’s because we work in an environment that says that journalism = opposition, expounded on. It’s stupid and damaging, because there are times when that sort of equalization is a bald faced lie.
When the opposition is being responsible, that this sort of journalism makes sense. Check this, from the New York Times:
The objections of the Republican opponents were summed up in the words of Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, who said the bill would mean sharp increases in energy costs and the loss of millions of jobs.
“This is the biggest energy tax in the history of the United States,” Mr. Rogers said.
That makes sense to me, because that seems like something I can believe in, and seems like opposition based on the principle that an argument is in good faith. I don’t agree, but I see how the position can be tenable. Dick Cheney? The dude doesn’t even believe that himself. He’s pure spin, total political crap. Even if he once belived what he was doing, his speech today is point for point designed to obfuscate and confuse. Global Warming? Same deal — you can’t really believe they have taken the time to read the science, because if they had… well, they could still disagree, but it wouldn’t be along the lines of HOW they disagree. “Wind Farms are bad because they slow wind down, thus heating up the globe.” Really? That’s the sort of thing that is not good faith opposition. But it’s covered as if it’s the same.
I need to stop writing this. I’m getting all worked up, and this point is a broken record for me anyway. Maybe I should go take a long hot bath to relax… or maybe I could go find a homeless person in the street to beat up. You know, I’ve heard of people doing both things to relax. They must be about the same — both are valid, it’s just a difference of opinion.
Ok, after this I’m going to let my little Dyson Freedman obsession slide. But everyone should, if they have a moment, check out this back and forth on last week’s On The Media that tackles the NY times article that I’ve linked toa few times.
You can listen to all of Bob Garfield’s interview, both with the author of the article and with Joe Romm, a writer for The Climate Progress blog, here:
On the surface, it seems like I should be in Romm’s corner. I agree with a lot of the rabble-rousing that goes on at Climate Progress (a great site that I don’t remember to check enough) and usually agree that big name press for global warming deniers is sort of deadly. It just adds more obfuscation, etc. to something that pretty much needs to be acted on now to get anything done. And yet… I can’t quite get fired up about it like Romm is. The Times can stand on a pretty long record of good reporting on the realities of Global Warming, and they can stand on a pretty good record of not crushing any opinions out there just to crush opinions. It didn’t seem to me like the Times was endorsing the points Dyson was making (though it was a personally sympathetic article).
I do find myself sympathetic with Joe’s point that
“This is worse than a needless distraction. This is just parceling out bad information with good information and hoping that the public is smart enough to distinguish the two.”
But for some reason, I’ve wasted days on end thinking about Dyson, what he means, and how much it should affect my (staunch) feelings about Global Warming. Which, I think, is why I still find myself agreeing with this quote from the author of the article, Nicholas Dawidoff. And why I’ve written many more then 1000 words on the subject.
I’m just interested in how he thinks and the depth and the singularity of his point of view. He’s a completely original person, and a brilliant and an unusual and an accomplished person, and an unpredictable person, and that’s what attracts me to him. I just think that he is so worth listening to, whether you agree with him or not. And I certainly don’t agree with everything that he says, but I’m interested in everything that he says. And there are not that many people in this world about who you can say, “I’m interested in everything that he says.”
For me, that’s what came through in the article: that Dyson was the kind of person I could spend all day sitting around listening to, simply because he is fascinating. I don’t know how many people like that I can name, so even when these sage few do come up with a view that I find nigh on heretical, I’m still down to let ‘em talk it out. They earned it, right?
This is what happens, Larry. This is what happens when no one knows what a word means!
I don’t want to throw this table at the top of this post, but there is a big list of the words that can be defined under the rubric of “green”. A big list. This means, of course, that when people use that word, they are often speaking in cross purposes, in riddles, and in secondary meanings.
Food Yields are Dropping.
The Punjab, India
India is in trouble right now. Large sections of the Bread Basket of Asia are experiencing lower and lower farming yields as they pesticide their soil to the point of no return. This is the sort of bad news (though I think that it’s something environmentalists have seen coming) which Monsanto and like companies were certainly ignoring for long stretches. (Much like SOMEone and his post on Monsanto!) A future without a dramatic change in farming methods and an improvement in land stewardship is one likely to look a lot like the American Dust Bowl in the ’30s, and the Joads know how that worked out. It goes with out saying that India’s food sources are not going to be able to hold up under all of the top soil blowing away.
A depressing and potentially horrific story in it’s own right, it also highlights for me how much Green-washing and Green Language needs a new set of words. You know, copyrighted words. That no one else can use. ‘Cause that’s how language works.
The “Green Revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s meant that if farmers embraced chemicals and high-yield seeds, their fields would turn lush green with crops. (An official at the U.S. State Department, William Gaud, apparently coined the term in 1968.)
During the Cold War, the term also implied that if countries like India could stamp out hunger, the population would be less likely to foment a violent revolution and go communist. (more…)
Thomas Friedman and I have a love hate relationship.
Well, that’s a lie: Thomas Friedman has no idea I exist, yet I am still convinced that he ripped off my ideas in his climb to centrist-environmental fame, as he published one article back in the day that was pretty much the same words as mine, slightly re-ordered. All I’m sayin’ is, that had we turned the two articles in to the same teacher, eyebrows would have been raised.
I have been trying to find a logical way to work this picture of Dr. Tobias Manhatten into a post for a week now. I've failed to come up with a logical reason, so here it is with no connection to the post what-so-ever. Enjoy!
I often find that Friedman is guilty of some lazy eco-writing, and I don’t think this is an exception. Maybe it’s simple jealousy that I am not on eco-tour with him, but the entire intro about bio-diversity and crocodiles eating fishes isn’t really the point that he goes on to make. Rather, it reads to me like a generic eco-intro. Just add animal name type. Marvel at nature for 3 minutes, allow to simmer until point coalesces. Salt to taste.
Makes me think of G’s idea for demoting Times columnists. What we need is, a minor league of folks ready to go, prepared to step in if too many columns get mailed in. The Times Op-Ed page has got to be one of the most read and most talked about opinion platforms in the country, and you are telling me you are wasting words and time like this? Frankly, I don’t even think that Friedman is the worst when it comes to half-ass-ing these things (David Brooks is number one for demotion in my mind), but who would object to a little competitive fire being lit under their butts? Maybe we can handle it like they do with English Soccer teams – a points system!
Good Lord. Fine. The Cohen Brothers just produced a new video knocking on Clean Coal.
Yeah, its sort of funny. Yes, Clean Coal is a tough sell, and I’ve seen nothing to suggest that it is real science. But is the Environmental world really so starved for humor that Every Single Green Group In The World has featured this video in some way? It is all over the blogs, it has arrived in my inbox between 8 and 10 times… come on guys. I guess it is funny, but certainly not earth shattering in the conceit.
Man, the left is crowing over this thing tho. I actually feel vaguely browbeaten into mentioning this. From a Reality Email:
When it comes to making cutting edge films like “Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men,” and “The Big Lebowski,” Joel and Ethan Coen are the real deal.
Now, they’ve got one more title on that impressive list.
“Air Freshener” is directed by the Coen brothers, and we’re proud to say it’s Reality’s latest ad — calling out the coal industry’s ridiculous claims that coal is clean as only the Coen brothers can.
Hyperbole much?
Yeah, that spot really resonates with the genius of the Big Lebowski. Look, props to those guys putting their name behind something, and cheers on creating something more creative then your average press release. All things considered, Reality has done a great job with the Anti-clean coal campaign. Some of the best in the biz, and definitely worthy of a forward… but this just highlights for me how bad the rest of the environmental world has been at this sort of humor. (PETA excepted)
Considering how much we rag on reporters and their “reporting” on things green, we feel that it’s only fair to complement the good stuff when we see it. This, thanks to the Real Live MC, (who we think might have had a hand in it’s creation) is a bit of reporting that seems to actually have sense of the scale of what is going on and why it matters.
WSJ FTW! Which, frankly, is funny to me, because a lot of the video that I see coming from them is so focused on making the bank that it a) doesn’t tell stories and b) glosses over stuff pretty heavily. This is not a sweeping endorsment of the WSJ stance on the environment, lets just put it that way.
If nothing else can be said of our ramblings here on LtAG, we certainly can claim to be tapped in to the ebb and flow of the green sector and its news cycle. What we’ve watched happen over two years of voracious consumption of this stuff is a common tale: it is the story of the 24 hour news cycle. Having become mainstream, Green has become an “issue”, subject to the mercurial swings of the news coverage. Everyone remember that little bio-fuel blip that we all went through, when all anyone could talk about was bio-fuels as the solution to our gas woes? And then everyone remember the counter bio-fuel “corn needs to go to food” backlash? Oh, those were the days! Nothing really changed during that time: the technology continued to stutter its way toward someday being useful, dead ends happened, and science ground forward… but that’s not an interesting story and its not the story the news told.
Within the past month, the roll out of GE’s smart grid ads have precipitated (or rode the cresting wave of?) a whole slew of interest in “smart” technology, from electricity meters to cars to… bridges?
Sure, it gets 330 mpg highway, but can it unplug your cell-phone charger too?
There certainly is a lot of talk about being green these days. A lot of publicity on a lot of different fronts. Given the media exposure, I think it would be prudent to see how well perceptions match up with reality.
As I am sure many a commentator has noted before, there is a truly disproportionate amount of attention being paid to three letters in particular: M-P-G. A lot of people seem to regard the mpg of your vehicle as a merit badge, a barometer for just how “green” you are. The unfortunate truth is that mpg represents but a small slice of the energy pie, even when considering the transportation sector in isolation. First, we should be concerned not about miles, but about passenger miles. Five people carpooling in a gas-guzzler surely beats five people each driving their own hybrid car. Second, we need to account for the embodied energy in the production of a new vehicle. With regards to transportation, we should ultimately be thinking about how to take cars off the road, and how to get people to share cars, bike, walk or use public transportation.
The outsized attention being paid to vehicular fuel efficiency ought to give us pause. How else do the various loci of media scrutiny skew public attention on energy issues? There are a lot of commercials these days about the wondrous possibilities of a smart electric grid and smart devices (vehicles included). Is all the hoopla deserved? Does it crowd out other energy interests? By many estimates, agriculture accounts for fully one-fifth of U.S. petroleum consumption. But is one-fifth of our attention being directed towards increasing the energy efficiency of agricultural practices? I don’t have any numbers to back me up on this, but I would guess not.
Media scrutiny is important because it plays a role in shaping the public conscious and directing public as well as private funds towards the development of various initiatives. It would behoove the “green movement” to think about how the allocation of media attention matches up with underlying realities.
