In honor of Earth Day, a clip from “Our Fragile Earth” featuring Michael Pollan, Majora Carter, Commissioner Dan Esty, and moderator John Dankosky in 2012. In this clip, the panelists are animated as they talk about fracking and the environment.
Marjora Carter - sellout, or still fighting?
Former Forum panelist Majora Carter (“Our Fragile Earth,” 2012) was on the cover of the New York Times today, but not all publicity is good publicity…
“Many former allies and neighbors say that Ms. Carter trades on the credibility she built in the Bronx, while no longer representing its interests. They say she has capitalized on past good deeds in the way that politicians parlay their contacts into a lobbying career, or government regulators are hired by the companies they once covered.”
Watch the clip below, read the article here: http://tinyurl.com/d7r6xcm, and let us know what you think.
Majora Carter & Michael Pollan clash with the Commissioner of CT DEEP Dan Esty over hydrofracking (From The CT Forum’s Our Fragile Earth Forum on 5/5/12)
It seems that it’s hard to really care about scientific realities until we feel like they really affect us. Well, seems like American’s are finally getting worked up about climate change.
Check out the Yale report “Extreme Weather, Climate & Preparedness in the American Mind”
Highlights:
- 82 percent of Americans report that they personally experienced one or more types of extreme weather or a natural disaster in the past year;
- 35 percent of all Americans report that they were personally harmed either a great deal or a moderate amount by one or more of these extreme weather events in the past year;
- Over the past several years, Americans say the weather in the U.S. has been getting worse – rather than better – by a margin of over 2 to 1 (52% vs. 22%);
- A large majority of Americans believe that global warming made several high profile extreme weather events worse, including the unusually warm winter of December 2011 and January 2012 (72%), record high summer temperatures in the U.S. in 2011 (70%), the drought in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 (69%), record snowfall in the U.S. in 2010 and 2011 (61%), the Mississippi River floods in the spring of 2011 (63%), and Hurricane Irene (59%);
"I do think that climate change campaigners like yourself should be more upfront about what you’re trying to ‘save.’ It’s not the world. It’s not humanity either, which I’d bet will survive whatever comes in some form or another, though perhaps with drastically reduced numbers and no broadband connection. No, what you’re trying to save, it seems to me, is the world you have grown used to."
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Part of a provocative piece highlighting the work of Paul Kingsnorth, who believes that “civilization as we have known it is coming to an end; brought down by a rapidly changing climate, a cancerous economic system and the ongoing mass destruction of the non-human world. But it is driven by our belief that this age of collapse — which is already beginning — could also offer a new start, if we are careful in our choices.”
Something to think about leading up to Our Fragile Earth Forum on May 5.
Sure, we may have appreciated the mild winter and record-breaking spring temperatures. But what does this all mean for the future of our planet?
NPR’s “All Things Considered” reports: “The United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change released a report this week that says we’re more likely to face extreme weather events in the coming decades. That includes things like more intense heat waves, heavier rainfalls and longer droughts.”
Read the entire story here.
"Sustainability is broad and deep, and means different things to different people. Overall, it’s about forging a new paradigm where we consider the social, environmental, and economic impacts of our actions. But there is no one way to get this right — and that’s been our biggest (and most creative) challenge. Sustainability should manifest differently for, say, a transportation company than it does for an architecture firm or a shoe factory. The underlying principles are the same, but the ways we arrive at what sustains us are dynamic, evolving, and — in their best representations — customized for the contexts in which they were created."
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Environmental journalist Simran Sethi
Read the entire interview from The Atlantic, here.
Dinner will never look the same again…
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
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Michael Pollan
He will join Majora Carter at our May 5 Forum, Our Fragile Earth.
"…the Earth is full. We are now using so many resources and putting out so much waste into the Earth that we have reached some kind of limit, given current technologies. The economy is going to have to get smaller in terms of physical impact."
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Paul Gilding, environmentalist, quoted in Thomas Friedman’s “The Earth is Full.”
Read the whole thing here.
