Bill McKibben is one of the greatest environmental writers and activists of our time. In 1989 he wrote The End of Nature, which is considered by many to be the first book on global warming written for a general audience. Since then he has written countless articles, given hundreds if not thousands of public lectures, and is the main organizer of the 350.org movement to solve the climate crisis. One year ago McKibben published an influential article in Rolling Stone magazine entitled “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” The thesis of the article is that there are three significant numbers that everyone needs…
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The Unbelievers
The Wikipedia entry for the “new atheism movement” reads as follows: New Atheism is the name given to the ideas promoted by a collection of modern atheist writers who have advocated the view that “religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises.” This is not a terrible definition, but it is not particularly good either. What’s unfortunate about it is that it is defines “new atheism” in terms of its negative goal of criticizing or rebutting religion and religious ideas. But new atheism also has a positive goal, which…
Islamophobia and gender equality
A recent article reprinted in Truthout has the provocative title “The biggest lie you’ve told about the oppression of Muslim women.” And what is that biggest lie? According to Lauren Rankin, author of the article and graduate student in Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, the biggest lie is that Islam is a “violent and misogynistic faith, one from which Muslim women need to be saved.” Rankin adds that those who perpetuate this lie–as Joyce Carol Oates allegedly did in this series of tweets–suffer from a form of racism known as “Islamophobia,” a term that has also recently been…
A Brave New 1984
The term “Orwellian” is being used a lot in the current discussions concerning the global surveillance programs carried out by the NSA and other British and American government agencies. The term relates, of course, to George Orwell’s famous novel (written in 1949), set in a futuristic dystopia of perpetual war, omnipresent surveillance, broad censorship, and mind control. This novel is also the origin of the term “Big Brother”. In the world Orwell (i.e. Eric Blair) describes, books are banned and burned, newspapers are controlled and censored, information is monopolized and restricted, and the truth is drowned by propaganda. Resistance and dissent…
Why we should care about government surveillance
In releasing information concerning the top-secret US and British government surveillance programs to the press, Edward Snowden initiated–at great personal cost–a much-needed discussion concerning the costs and benefits of, and ultimate justification for, these mass government surveillance programs. Some people, especially those in positions of power in the US and UK, have tried their best to conflate this important public discussion with a spurious debate over whether or not Snowden is a traitor. That Snowden is a hero, not a traitor, barely needs mentioning at this point, but what does need to be pointed out is that the debate over…
Propaganda (documentary)
The film “Propaganda” purports to be a film smuggled out of North Korea. The narrator claims that she was approached, while on holiday in South Korea, by two alleged North Korean defectors, who presented her with a DVD originating from North Korea, asking her to translate it and upload it to the internet. The film features a surprisingly accurate analysis of contemporary western media and society. It features quotes from many well-respected intellectuals and manages to connect the dots in a very clear fashion. It does not falsify information or statistics or take any text, audio, or video material out of…
Zombie education
William Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel of the US Air Force who now writes for TomDispatch and other publications. In his latest piece for Truthout he explains the concept of “zombie education.” True education, Astore writes, is transformative and soul-enriching. “It opens alternative paths to living that don’t begin and end at the workplace. It measures personal fulfillment in ways that aren’t restricted to take-home pay… It’s about becoming a savvier citizen whose appreciation of, and dedication to, democracy is keener and more heartfelt.” Zombie education, on the other hand, is narrowly focused on individual profit or vocational training. “Students are…
Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance (article)
The recent revelations by Edward Snowden of the global surveillance of internet communications by the American NSA was a vivid reminder of the need for everyone to think much more carefully about their online behavior. However, many people seem to regard Snowden’s revelations as interesting or curious but not startling. Such people seem to think that they would never be the target of US government surveillance or that, even if they were, there would be nothing to fear as they are law-abiding people. This article, written by Moxie Marlinspike for WIRED challenges these comfortable assumptions. It is well worth reading. Some notable paragraphs:…
The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’ (article by Julian Assange)
In a recent New York Times opinion piece, “The Banaility of ‘Don’t be Evil,” Julian Assange critiques the book “The New Digital Age – Reshaping the future of people, nations and business,” co-authored by Jared Cohen and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. A short summary of the book can be found here. The title of Assange’s article, which is fiercely critical of Cohen and Schmidt’s ideas for the future of a digitized civilization, is a reference to a phrase long ago used by Hannah Arendt to note that the greatest evils in human history (particularly the Holocaust) were not executed by sociopaths and…
Markets erode moral values (study)
In a recent study, researches from the University of Bamberg and University of Bonn suggest that they have found causal evidence of the corrupting effects of markets on moral values. The abstract reads as follows: The possibility that market interaction may erode moral values is a long-standing, but controversial, hypothesis in the social sciences, ethics, and philosophy. To date, empirical evidence on decay of moral values through market interaction has been scarce. We present controlled experimental evidence on how market interaction changes how human subjects value harm and damage done to third parties. In the experiment, subjects decide between either…
Another hero
A recently created Wikipedia entry on Edward Snowden read as follows: Edward Joseph Snowden (born 1984) is an American technical contractor, a former CIA employee, and a traitor. Snowden released classified material on top-secret United States National Security Agency (NSA) programs including the PRISM surveillance program to The Guardian and The Washington Post in June 2013. PRISM is a top-secret government surveillance program, in operation since 2007, that enables the NSA to access the servers of nine major Internet companies, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo! and Facebook, to collect data on the emails, documents, audio and video chats, photographs, and connection logs of not only Americans but also billions of people around the world…
Global greenhouse gas emissions chart
Ecofys, a sustainability consultancy has put together a clear and well-arranged chart that maps worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by source and sector. It is based on data from credible sources such as the IEA, the EU Joint Research Centre, CDIAC, and the Global Carbon Project. One point worth noting is that while this chart analyzes the greenhouse gasses by source and sector, it does not show the varying contributions to climate change of these different gasses. For example, there is much less methane (CH4) being released into the atmosphere than carbon-dioxide (CO2), but CH4 is about 25 times more potent than CO2…
Why Poverty? (a documentary series)
Steps is a partnership of two non-profit organisation (one in Denmark, the other in South Africa) that commissions documentaries to raise awareness about important social issues. For it’s most recent project, called Why Poverty?, it commissioned eight documentaries and 30 short films on the topic of poverty. These are powerful and thought-provoking films that really help to shed light on the issue of poverty. One of the great documentaries in this series, Park Avenue: money, power, and the American dream, is a fascinating look into the lives of the people living at 740 Park Ave., the most exclusive address in New York City.…
The climate change debate in brief
A new survey, published in the peer-reviewed Environmental Research Letters, a publication of the Institute of Physics (IOP), has definitively confirmed the scientific consensus in climate science literature: 97 percent of peer-reviewed papers agree that global warming is happening and human activities are responsible. The survey, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, examined some 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers and found a 97% consensus that humans are causing global warming. The work expanded upon an earlier survey of the literature by Naomi Oreskes, published in 2004, as well as an informal review conducted by James Powell, published on DeSmogBlog in 2012. Lead author of…
Inequality and trolleyology
The most famous thought-experiment of contemporary philosophy, first described by Philippa Foot, goes roughly as follows: Suppose a runaway train is hurtling down a track headed toward five innocent people who will surely be killed if the train is not stopped or diverted. The brakes on the train have failed and there is no other way of stopping it, but the driver can divert the train on to a side-track, where one innocent person is standing. This person will surely die if the train is diverted. Should the driver divert the train on to the side-track? In the last decade…
How to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (lecture by Norman Finkelstein)
Norman Finkelstein is one of the clearest, most informed, and most courageous commentators on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has been speaking out and writing about the conflict for most of his adult life and has paid a heavy price for his candor and integrity on the issue. In the lecture below Finkelstein lays out the reasons why a solution to this conflict is a distinct possibility, dissects some of the propaganda surrounding the issue, and defines the challenges that must be faced in order to achieve a solution. One of the great strengths of this lecture, like most others by…
A creative response to Monopoly
Brian Van Slyke is a worker-owner at the Toolbox for Education and Social Activism (TESA), which creates educational resources on social change and cooperative movements. One of his coolest projects is a radical re-doing of the board game “Monopoly,” which has given generations of kids great fun while teaching them all the wrong values. The version of capitalism presented in Monopoly–grab all the wealth, make others pay, and leave them in financial ruin–is in fact a massive social problem, one of the greatest problems confronting humanity. Enter Brian Van Slyke, who wanted to create a fun game that could get…
Should animals be off the menu? (a public debate)
The official description of the debate: Do you eat meat? Did you know you are in the minority? Out of an audience of hundreds, 73.6% agreed meat should be off the menu – find out why, then ask yourself if you are making the right choice. Intelligence Squared‘s 2012 series of debates kicked off with a look at the ethics of eating meat. Six speakers are divided into two teams for lively and insightful arguments for and against the proposition, ‘Animals Should Be Off the Menu’. Speaking for the proposition are Peter Singer, Philip Wollen and Veronica Ridge; against it, Adrian Richardson,…
HOME (documentary)
HOME is a documentary that highlights how human activities are altering planet earth. It’s a direct, and at times emotional, appeal to viewers to wake up and pay attention to what is going on around them. It is filled with stunning and disturbing footage from around the globe. But it’s not all doom and globe. The film ends with uplifting scenes and information on some of the positive changes that are taking place all around the world today and ways in which individuals can act, as citizens and consumers, to avert catastrophe. Video embedding has been disabled by request, but…
Concrete canvas shelters (creative responses)
From the category “creative responses to environmental challenges“: Concrete Canvas Shelters. These are inflatable concrete buildings, hardened shelters that require only water and air for construction. According to the manufacturer, they can be constructed by 2 people without any training in under an hour and are ready to use in 24 hours, making them a viable alternative to conventional emergency shelters. Contrary to the conventional light tents that only last for a limited amount of time and which use massive amounts of plastic and other synthetic fibre, these concrete shelters can last for decades, provide reliable shelter from even the heaviest storms,…
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