New Clear Vision

From Destabilizing the Biosphere to Restabilizing Our Relationships

by Randall Amster

There’s been a lot written in recent years about the concept of “global warming,” which is actually a misnomer in some ways; while the planet as a whole may be warming, the distribution of changes is not even throughout the system. In order to more accurately reflect the situation, many use the phrase “climate change” instead, intended to express the idea that it isn’t just about the net temperature increase of the planet but the rampant alterations in weather patterns as a whole.

Even this linguistic amendment, however, hasn’t fully addressed the issue, and still leads to counterarguments of the sort that insist the planet’s climate systems are always changing and that they behave cyclically regardless of human contributions. (more…)

If I Had Been Asked to Speak at Your Commencement…

by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez

This is what I would have said:

It’s become a cliché to say that every day is the first day of the rest of your life, and yet like most clichés this one holds truth to it.

When you walk down that aisle today holding your B.A. diploma, achieving a goal which you have worked towards for many years, you will be stepping into your adulthood with all the rights and privileges, but also all the responsibilities that this maturity brings.

The year 2012, long prophesied as a time of great change and transition, is not an easy time to be reaching adulthood.

I don’t have to tell you that times are tough economically, or that our planetary environment is facing its own severe shifts due to anthropogenic global heating.  You have probably heard tell of a “sixth great extinction event” on the horizon, if climate change projections continue unabated on their current course, causing the heating and acidification of the oceans and resulting drought, floods, and violent storms on land. (more…)

Hydraulically Fracturing Our Humanity

by Tina Lynn Evans and Tom Kerns

{Editor’s note: Environment and Human Rights Advisory recently released a report on the human rights implications of hydraulic fracturing. The report’s author Tom Kerns, Executive Director of EHRA, and Tina Lynn Evans, who organized the network of individuals and organizations that brought the report to fruition, reflect on the intersection between environmental damage and damage to human health. They call upon us to consider the fundamental moral implications of fracking and to use the concept of universal human rights as a defining feature of our engagement with the environment and other people.}

I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man; Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand. — Bob Dylan

“It’s the economy, stupid.” That refrain from the 1992 presidential election would aptly describe the subject of most concern to many in the U.S. today. This is not surprising in the aftermath of the bursting housing bubble and the larceny committed by the banks (with government assistance), and it’s not surprising in an atmosphere of crushing unemployment and myriad underwater mortgages. (more…)

How Much Is an Earth, and Do You Have One in Extra Large?

by David Swanson

Let’s Get Out There and Turn Things Around

by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez

In the latest issue of Orion Magazine, environmental activists Derrick Jensen and Paul Kingsnorth both express their frustrations with the current environmental movement.

Jensen takes movement organizers to task for their drift towards actions that are “fun and sexy.”  “The fact that so many people routinely call for environmentalism to be more fun and more sexy reveals not only the weakness of our movement but also the utter lack of seriousness with which even many activists approach the problems we face,” he says bitterly.  “When it comes to stopping the murder of the planet, too many environmentalists act more like they’re planning a party than building a movement.”

But let’s face it, there are a lot of people on this planet who find the issues addressed by environmentalism just too scary and depressing to deal with. The environmentalist party-planners are trying to reach these folks, who have been suckled from birth on cheery feel-good media, by presenting environmental action as fun and upbeat, rather than as doom-driven and angst-ridden. (more…)