Tag: Environment

Why We Can’t Ignore the Termites in the Basement

Trish

How can governments, including ours, say it would hurt their economies to fix climate change? Don’t they realize, as Al Gore pointed out in the scene in An Inconvenient Truth with the gold bricks, that losing life as we know it not only costs more but trumps, well, everything?

PAX World Mutual Funds’ Julie Gorte, senior vice president of sustainable investing, explains the attitudes of those who think we have the luxury to ignore, or postpone dealing with, global warming.

The termites will destroy your house much more quickly and much more surely than some of those wolf-at-the-door problems, but you always have the feeling that you can get to them later

I sort of divide all problems into two types. There’s a wolf-at-the-door problem, which is how we think about things like terrorism and taxes, and then there’s the termites-in-the-basement problem, which is what climate change is. The termites will destroy your house much more quickly and much more surely than some of those wolf-at-the-door problems, but you always have the feeling that you can get to them later — that we can cut our energy consumption, that we can replace fossil fuels, that we can cut emissions next year or the year after that, when we can afford it.

And we end up never getting to those problems, and then we wind up in a world where the sea level rises not 35 millimeters but 35 feet, and the disease vectors have expanded so that tropical diseases are all over North America and they affect our food supply and everything else. There are so many things that climate change can do that will make this world something we never thought we’d see in our lifetimes that I think it’s the most important thing that we need to focus on.

Friday Funnies: CheatNeutral.Com

Trish

Have you, like me, had problems with the whole concept of carbon offsets? As it’s usually explained, you drive your Lady Hummer, fly when it would be easier to walk, and install an ice rink in the backyard of your Miami home…BUT you also pay someone to clean up enough carbon somewhere else on the planet to make up for it.

Is the problem you have with this somewhat convoluted and contrived brainchild the nagging thought that it would be more effective not to burn all those greenhouse gases to begin with? Well, the British have a parody web site for you.

CheatNeutral.com applies the idea behind carbon offsets to relationships. They sell cheat offsets to those who are being unfaithful to their significant others, while paying monogamous couples to stay that way. Watch them explain the concept to folks on the street, and it really dawns on you how much better it would be to just use less of the planet’s scarce resources. And oh yeah, how much better not to sleep around on your partner!

Why You Should Care About New Orleans

Trish

On the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall near New Orleans, all the ink was about the progress, and lack thereof, in restoring the city and the rest of the Gulf coast.

We live in an era of failed leadership. Corrupt and incompetent politicians. Thieving CEOs. Priests as pedophiles. Media monopolies. A president’s unpopular, intractable war. Steroid-enhanced sluggers.

Two years later, Ron Fournier says it’s time to start learning the real lessons of Katrina, and they’re not about wind or water.

We need to wake up to the fact that we are all just one big storm or disaster away from being one of those people whose calls for help were answered by voice mail.

Katrina is old news, right? New Orleans — who cares? It’s just another big city with big problems, bad luck and bad weather. Get over it.

Actually, please don’t.

Don’t ever get over the tragedy of New Orleans. It’s your tragedy, too.

What happened to this historic city two years ago is more than the obvious cautionary tale of what might befall your community after a natural disaster or a terrorist strike. It’s also a sad reflection of what’s happening now — today, in your hometown and across an anxious and ailing nation…

If this country can’t help New Orleans rebound — if we and our leaders break the promises made to its citizens — what are the odds your health care will ever get cheaper? Your bridges safer? Your schools better?

“New Orleans is an incubator for all our nation’s ills,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, author of “The Great Deluge,” a book about Katrina.

“If you study what’s going on in New Orleans, it’s just an exaggerated version of what’s hitting us in many areas of the country,” he said. “Just pick your topic.”

OK, let’s start from the top.

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Get Yer Green On — Daily

Buck Banks

Although we are loathe to send you, gentle reader, away from Pensito Review, sometimes there’s stuff on the Internets out there that is worth sharing. Like The Daily Green, a daily e-mail newsletter from Hearst that has just started being distributed this week. It is what its name implies — a daily compendium of good stuff for the planet.

From earth-friendly veggie recipes (Trish and Jon will be happy) to biodegradable doggie poop pick-up bags (Spot, Bonnie and Pookey will be thrilled) to profiles of green people (Brad Pitt!!??) and tips on how you can change your lifestyle to be easier on Ma Earth (skip the bleach when washing clothes), The Daily Green is a good, practical resource. And it’s free, too.

In the same vein, check out Grist Magazine (environmental news and commentary) and its consistently entertaining advice column, Ask Umbra. Both are free, too.