Author Archives: Kit Stolz

One of the many good ideas that came out of the Yale Project on Climate Change was simply to put together a one-page version of the consensus science on climate change, and what it means for us here on earth.

By chance, Roger Ebert as a veteran reviewer happens to have done that, and quite well, I think, and his version is posted below. I’ll continue to post more good versions as they come along, but this is actually the best I’ve seen to date.

(A personal note: For reasons mysterious to yours truly, despite the fact that he has been reviewing movies for almost forty years, is a reliable, amusing, and insightful critic, and has even won the Pulitzer Prize, it seems that people just cannot give Ebert his due. Often I hear him called "Gene Siskel," even though his former partner died seven years ago. Or they call him "the fat one." Perhaps it’s because Ebert is a better writer than he is a TV performer. Or perhaps people just don’t like critics. Or perhaps people don’t like people named Roger. Anyhow! Please look at the following as writing, and ask yourself: Is this not a good summary of the challenge of global warming?)

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (summary/review by Roger Ebert)

I want to write this review so every reader will begin it and finish it. I am a liberal, but I do not intend this as a review reflecting any kind of politics. It reflects the truth as I understand it, and it represents, I believe, agreement among the world’s experts.

Global warming is real.

A couple of weeks ago the National Review ran a cover story by Jason Steorts claiming that fears of melting ice at the poles were over-hyped. Following a line of argument laid out by the ExxonMobil-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute, Steorts quoted a study by a scientist named Curt Davis. Davis, director of the Center forContinue reading “Another Far-Right Hack Misrepresents Another Researcher”

Orion is a bimonthly out of New England passionately in love with our planet; show a little interest and they’ll send you a big gorgeous issue for free. Even when I disagree with one of its essayists, as I sometimes do, I can only respect the adventurousness of their writing, which takes nothing for granted.

So I wish I could link to a Q&A they have in this month’s issue on an activist named Van Jones, who works with Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland. (It’s off-line.) Jones speaks about what it means to be an activist, and, specifically, what he calls "the reverence movement." (His resume gives you some idea of his worth, but not enough: Let me quote some of the Orion interview with him.) If you want to know more, ask Orion for this month’s issue.

A reverence movement is, at the end of the day, taking corrective steps to further enhance the beauty of others and the beauty of yourself.

If you ask people what their actual experience of being on the left is, lots of people say, "Oh, we’re saving the world, blah, blah, blah. I say: "No, no, no, what’s your experience–like, Thursday?" They say: "Oh, it was horrible." It’s like the difference between using diesel versus solar as your energy source. Anger is a messy fuel that eventually causes more problems than it can solve.

Back in l968, the Golden Gate Bridge eliminated tolls on northbound traffic, and doubled the toll on southbound traffic. This brilliantly simple change greatly sped up traffic through the toll booths, but had no great effect on toll collection. Since then, it’s an idea that has been copied around the world. For me, it’s aContinue reading “Using Innovation to Reduce Emissions”

Regarding attempts to negotiate nuclear issues with Iran, on Friday the White House’s newly-appointed Press Secretary Tony Snow declared that "Iran cannot reject [a new proposal] it has not seen." Nice try, Mr. Snow, but your boss has already rejected Al Gore’s presentation on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, by refusing to see it againstContinue reading ““Cannot Reject What It Has Not Seen””