Tag: environment

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Teaching climate change with art

University courses on global warming have become common, and Prof. Stephanie LeMenager’s new class here at the University of Oregon has all the expected, alarming elements: rising oceans, displaced populations, political conflict, endangered animals.

The goal of this class, as reports the New York Times, “is not to marshal evidence for climate change as a

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human-caused crisis, or to measure its effects — the reality and severity of it are taken as given — but how to think about it, prepare for it and respond to it. Instead of scientific texts, the class, “The Cultures of Climate Change,” focuses on films, poetry, photography, essays and a heavy dose of the mushrooming subgenre of speculative fiction known as climate fiction, or cli-fi, novels like “Odds Against Tomorrow,” by Nathaniel Rich, and “Solar,” by Ian McEwan.

“Speculative fiction allows a kind of scenario-imagining, not only about the unfolding crisis but also about adaptations and survival strategies,” Professor LeMenager said. “The time isn’t to reflect on the end of the world, but on how to meet it. We want to apply our humanities skills pragmatically to this problem.”

“The class reflects a push by universities to meld traditionally separate disciplines; Professor LeMenager joined the university last year to teach both literature and environmental studies.

Her course also shows how broadly most of academia and a younger generation have moved beyond debating global warming to accepting it as one of society’s central challenges. That is especially true in places like Eugene, a verdant and damp city, friendly to the cyclist and inconvenient to the motorist, where ordering coffee in a disposable cup can elicit disapproving looks. Oregon was a pioneer of environmental studies, and Professor LeMenager’s students tend to share her activist bent, eagerly discussing in a recent session the role that the arts and education can play in galvanizing people around an issue.To some extent, the course is feeding off a larger literary trend. Novels set against a backdrop of ruinous climate change have rapidly gained in number, popularity and critical acclaim over the last few years, works like “The Windup Girl,” by Paolo Bacigalupi; “Finitude,” by Hamish MacDonald; “From Here,” by Daniel Kramb; and “The Carbon Diaries 2015,” by Saci Lloyd. Well-known writers have joined the trend, including Barbara Kingsolver, with “Flight Behavior,” and Mr. McEwan.

Continue reading “Teaching climate change with art”

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Most see human role in global warming

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More Americans believe increases in the Earth’s temperature over the last century are due to pollution from human activities (57%) than to naturally occurring changes in the environment (40%).Gallup reports that “The balance of views on this issue is essentially unchanged from 2013, but reflects broader agreement with the idea that mankind is responsible for global warming than was the case from 2010 through 2012, when barely half believed it. Agreement that human activities are responsible has yet to return, however, to the 61% level seen as recently as 2007. This trend comes from Gallup’s annual Environment poll, a nationally representative telephone survey conducted each March since 2001. The 2014 update was conducted March 6-9.

“Americans’ prevailing view that human activity is responsible for global warming doesn’t necessarily translate into concern over the issue. The percentage of Americans worried about global warming (as well as “climate change”) still ranks low relative to other issues, and barely a third expect global warming to pose a serious threat in their own lifetime.In the same survey, Gallup asks Americans to describe their general understanding of global warming, with 33% this year — a record high — saying they understand global warming “very well,” up from 27% in 2013 and triple the level seen in the initial 1992 measure.The proportion understanding the issue “fairly well” has also increased over the long term, from 42% in 1992 to 51% today, while the percentage who don’t understand has dropped by more than half, from 44% to 16%.Leading climate science researchers in the U.S. and globally — including those at the International Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. body that is at the forefront of climate research — are convinced that elevated levels of carbon dioxide and other byproducts of fossil fuel use are the reason the Earth’s temperature has warmed. Continue reading “Most see human role in global warming”

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Americans as guinea pigs

“A hidden epidemic is poisoning America,” writes the French publication Le Monde today in an article entitled “You Are a Guinea Pig.”Unknown

“The toxins are in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the walls of our homes and the furniture within them. We can’t escape it in our cars. It’s in cities and suburbs. It afflicts rich and poor, young and old. And there’s a reason why you’ve never read about it in the newspaper or seen a report on the nightly news: it has no name — and no antidote.

“The culprit behind this silent killer is lead. And vinyl. And formaldehyde. And asbestos. And Bisphenol A. And polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). And thousands more innovations brought to us by the industries that once promised “better living through chemistry,” but instead produced a toxic stew that has made every American a guinea pig and has turned the United States into one grand unnatural experiment. Continue reading “Americans as guinea pigs”

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Eat less meat, the scientists now say

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People in the richworld should become “demitarians” – eating half as much meat as usual, while stopping short of giving it up – in order to avoid severe environmental damage, scientists have urged, in the clearest picture yet of how farming practices are destroying the natural world, say today’s The Guardian

“They said the horsemeat scandal had uncovered the dark side of our lust for meat, which has fuelled a trade in undocumented livestock and mislabelled cheap ready meals. ‘There is a food chain risk,’ said Professor Mark Sutton, who coined the term demitarian and is lead author of a UN Environment Programme study published on Monday . ‘Now is a good time to talk to people about this.’

“The quest for ever cheaper meat in the past few decades – most people even in rich countries ate significantly less meat one and two generations ago – has resulted in a massive expansion of intensively farmed livestock. Continue reading “Eat less meat, the scientists now say”

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U.S. claims “enormous” reductions in carbon emissions

At today’s United Nations Climate Change meeting in Doha, Qatar, American officials asserted the U.S. had made “enormous” advances that much of the world didn’t know about. As reported in The Guardian, American progress in climate change has resulted in part by the carbon reductions from its investments in the controversial practice of “fracking” for shale gas. As reported by Fiona Harvey,

“The claim came as nearly 200 governments gathered in Doha, Qatar, for two weeks of talks aimed at forging an agreement on the climate. Governments have until 2015 to draw up a binding treaty, the first since the 1997 Kyoto protocol, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and avoid dangerous global warming. Continue reading “U.S. claims “enormous” reductions in carbon emissions”

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Writing about saving the world

Now we can add Sandy to the list of reasons to worry: about the environment, our bad habits, other people, and where all of it may be leading. And certainly lots of recent evidence seems to suggest that we have plenty of reasons to worry. But let’s be careful here. History shows that panic and fear have a way of infecting human thought, often feeding their own destructive patterns. In a recent essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books, K.C. Cole juxtaposes two works that manifest both the alarmist end-of-days perspective and a more nuanced consideration of the human mind. The essay entitled “How to Save ourselves from Extinction (One System at a Time)” begins thus:

“No one in their right mind would deliberately create the means of their Continue reading “Writing about saving the world”