Unconventional Sources

According to testimony given to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs today, we can expect the amount we drive to double by 2030 if current trends continue. That’s not bad for our free time. It’s bad for the environment as well, as pollution from transportation currently accounts for 28 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a portion that’s rapidly increasing.

Thankfully, there are organizations that are trying to reform American transportation, promoting increased efficiency, community redesign, and increased usage of efficient modes of transportation already available: Walking, bicycling and public transportation. Among these organizations is the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy – check ‘em out.

It’s a daring thing for a film to call its audience stupid, yet that’s just what The Age of Stupid does – and it’s probably right. The Age of Stupid is set in the future, with a main character who reviews the actions of people in our present day, seeing how those actions led to the climate change of the world that he knows.

The Guardian calls the film “The first successful dramatisation of climate change to hit the big screen”. That’s probably not fair, given the big release of The Day After Tomorrow a few years ago.

Still, The Age of Stupid seems worth seeing. Its premier showing is set for tomorrow.

The International Polar Year is over. It stretched between two years, actually, 2007 and 2008, with loads of research based upon cooperation between scientists from all over the world, researching the state of the north and south poles, climatologically and biologically.

The thing is, though that the work continues. Scientists continue to cooperate, to do work on these areas of research. The event goes away, and the science goes on.

Actually, the event continues too. The research done in 2007 and 2008 as part of the International Polar Year continues to bring new understanding about the state of climate change.

Today, the IPY team revealed that the minimum extent of year-round ice in Antarctica reached the smallest area ever measured during 2007 and 2008. Areas of Antarctica thought to be relatively untouched by climate change were found to have subject to unexpectedly strong effects of global warming as well.

The year has passed, but keep an eye on the International Polar Year, definitely still part of current events.

With the election of Barack Obama, Americans have assumed a new habit of passivity: Hope has become hoping that people in Washington D.C. will make things better. The thing is that while ordinary folks sit around and hope things get better, there are corporations and powerful organizations with paid lobbyists going to work in Washington D.C. every day to make sure that things don’t change.

If there is to be hope, we have to stop just hoping, and begin acting. We can’t count on elected officials to do what’s right. We have to force them to do what’s right, by taking action ourselves to help create the kind of public pressure that elected officials cannot resist.

That’s what the people at Force Change had in mind when they created their site, a place that informs citizens about environmental policy so that they’ll understand enough about environmental issues to apply intelligent pressure on the government and private organizations to make a real difference. Thanks to the people at Force Change. We’re reading.

Dr. Aslak Grinsted of the University of Copenhagen is a glaciologist. That may sound like a slow-moving field of study, but given the melting of the world’s glacier’s it’s actually a very fast-paced area of inquiry. It was Grinsted who in December 2008 released an analysis indicating that current projections of sea level change this century by the IPCC were much, much too conservative. His work may take place in the coldest spots on the planet, but in terms of its influence on our planet’s future, it’s steaming hot.

Keep an eye on Grinsted for more interesting work in the years to come.