blog
As promised, today I blog about the environment! (Obliquely.)
In case you missed it, Al Gore and the IPCC (who I mentioned in the last post) won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change.
Also, Thomas Friedman wrote an interesting article contrasting Al Gore and George Bush's leadership styles.
My parents just returned from the East Coast; my mom showed me a few of her pictures, including some WWII propaganda posters asking people to save rubber, fat drippings, and gas (by driving slowly - what would the bumper sticker be, "Everyday Sunday driver for war relief"?). Today, the government asks us for little besides taxes and civic obedience, and Americans have lost the habits of conservation and reuse. Two articles in the NYTimes last week argued that: a new life phase - odyssey - is developing between the stable, structured phases of adolescence and adulthood; and that my generation is willing to pursue our idealistic notions, but too complacently. Twenty-somethings have a latent energy and desire for change, but are lost in conflicting drives to pursue change and life stability and demoralized by the seeming immutability of big-business- and sound-bite-controlled politics. Thomas Friedman appeals to us:
So help us help the country. Give us leaders who are ballsy enough to listen to broke college students. Convince us democracy is real and effective. Give us viable options to contribute to society while learning and surviving: AmeriCorps pays $8 an hour, more than minimum wage but tight as a living wage; going door-to-door or manning telephone banks for Greenpeace pays minimally, is a dead-end occupation, and garners little respect for anything but our youthful idealism.
Better yet, maybe someone my age will throw off the lazy mantle of internet activism (says the blogger), and unite my generation, assuaging our political hopelessness or apathy.
In case you missed it, Al Gore and the IPCC (who I mentioned in the last post) won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change.
“We would encourage all countries, including the big countries, and challenge them to think again and to say what they can do to conquer global warming,” Dr. Mjoes [lead member of the peace committee] said in Oslo.
The four other members of the peace committee generally refuse to comment on the thinking behind the award, which in recent years has moved toward issues at a degree of remove from armed conflict, like social justice, poverty remediation and environmentalism. But in a telephone interview, Berge Furre, one of the four, said, “I hope this will have an effect on the attitudes of Americans as well as people in other countries.”
Also, Thomas Friedman wrote an interesting article contrasting Al Gore and George Bush's leadership styles.
Never has so much national unity — which could have been used to develop a real energy policy, reverse our coming Social Security deficit, assemble a lasting coalition to deal with Afghanistan and Iraq, maybe even get a national health care program — been used to build so little. That is what historians will note most about Mr. Bush’s tenure — the sheer wasted opportunity of it all.
My parents just returned from the East Coast; my mom showed me a few of her pictures, including some WWII propaganda posters asking people to save rubber, fat drippings, and gas (by driving slowly - what would the bumper sticker be, "Everyday Sunday driver for war relief"?). Today, the government asks us for little besides taxes and civic obedience, and Americans have lost the habits of conservation and reuse. Two articles in the NYTimes last week argued that: a new life phase - odyssey - is developing between the stable, structured phases of adolescence and adulthood; and that my generation is willing to pursue our idealistic notions, but too complacently. Twenty-somethings have a latent energy and desire for change, but are lost in conflicting drives to pursue change and life stability and demoralized by the seeming immutability of big-business- and sound-bite-controlled politics. Thomas Friedman appeals to us:
America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.
Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual.
So help us help the country. Give us leaders who are ballsy enough to listen to broke college students. Convince us democracy is real and effective. Give us viable options to contribute to society while learning and surviving: AmeriCorps pays $8 an hour, more than minimum wage but tight as a living wage; going door-to-door or manning telephone banks for Greenpeace pays minimally, is a dead-end occupation, and garners little respect for anything but our youthful idealism.
Better yet, maybe someone my age will throw off the lazy mantle of internet activism (says the blogger), and unite my generation, assuaging our political hopelessness or apathy.
Labels: activism, environment, news
Check out this photo album of the Creation Museum just built in Kentucky. Apparently if something is logical to humans but countermands "God's word" then humans should create new "logic" that fits into the young-earth creationist theory. Creationists deny macroevolution, yet this picture shows the development of new species (read: evolution) after the genetic bottleneck caused by the great flood. All I can say is that these people are quite creative in their attempts to reconcile reality with religion.
Labels: news
Oh great, "American military commanders in Baghdad are trying a radical new strategy to quell the widening sectarian violence by building a 12-foot-high, three-mile-long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite neighborhoods." Walls have always been positive in the past, right? I mean, the Jewish ghetto that was supposed to protect Jews, the Berlin Wall, the walls along the U.S.-Mexico border that force illegal immigrants to cross dangerous deserts? Tell me how this strategy is radical or new--it's a classic!
It's true that building a wall will reduce interactions between Sunnis and Shia in the area--they will now chiefly occur at the established passages through the wall. Perhaps the Americans think that because they know the locations of these passages, they will be able to concentrate their patrols there and better control what and who goes through. In turn, the passages will present better targets for killing the other sect by concentrating people in one location.
A wall is a short-term solution to a long-term problem, and a response to the effects of problems rather than the causes. According to the NYTimes article above, "many Sunnis across Baghdad complain that the Shiite-led government has choked off basic services to their neighborhoods, allowing trash to pile up in the streets, banks to shut down and health clinics to languish. So the wall raises fears of further isolation." Dividing people with a physical barrier perpetuates psychological categorizations of 'us' and 'them', which will in turn maintain the desire to kill each other. The only way I can see this potentially being positive is if construction of the wall is coupled with major efforts addressing the roots of the problem, which I do not know, but would guess include the lack of balanced government representation, infusion of religion into government, desire for and justification of revenge, and the fear, anger, and stress of living through a civil war.
It's true that building a wall will reduce interactions between Sunnis and Shia in the area--they will now chiefly occur at the established passages through the wall. Perhaps the Americans think that because they know the locations of these passages, they will be able to concentrate their patrols there and better control what and who goes through. In turn, the passages will present better targets for killing the other sect by concentrating people in one location.
A wall is a short-term solution to a long-term problem, and a response to the effects of problems rather than the causes. According to the NYTimes article above, "many Sunnis across Baghdad complain that the Shiite-led government has choked off basic services to their neighborhoods, allowing trash to pile up in the streets, banks to shut down and health clinics to languish. So the wall raises fears of further isolation." Dividing people with a physical barrier perpetuates psychological categorizations of 'us' and 'them', which will in turn maintain the desire to kill each other. The only way I can see this potentially being positive is if construction of the wall is coupled with major efforts addressing the roots of the problem, which I do not know, but would guess include the lack of balanced government representation, infusion of religion into government, desire for and justification of revenge, and the fear, anger, and stress of living through a civil war.
Labels: news
