Disasters by their nature are enormously loud, chaotic, disruptive events. Think the scream of hurricane winds, the crashing of boulders in floods, the phenomenal roar of a huge wildfire. Drought is different. Drought stays quiet. Its powers cannot be seen directly, save in the unblinking glare of the sun. Drought lacks drama. Yet — as oneContinue reading “California vs. the megadrought”
Author Archives: Kit Stolz
The emotional journey of climate change: Armitage
Twenty-odd years ago Bill McKibben called the climate crisis the biggest story in the world. Now, after years of scanty media coverage, by its own admission, The Guardian has launched a major effort to, in its own words, find a new narrative to tell a twenty year old story. They're going all out, with media (suchContinue reading “The emotional journey of climate change: Armitage”
Stupid F*!’&ing Bird: To wake Chekhov from the dead
The big winner this week in theater awards for 2014 in Los Angeles was a Russian playwright who's been dead for over a century. Well, not exactly, but writer Aaron Posner's brilliantly free adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull did win the L.A. Drama Critics Circle awards for best ensemble, direction, and writing. It's just spectacular,Continue reading “Stupid F*!’&ing Bird: To wake Chekhov from the dead”
What would Reagan do about climate change?
Ronald Reagan, the most beloved Republican president of our era, would act to avoid the oncoming train wreck that is climate change. Believe it or not. That is the contention of George Shultz, Reagan's long-term Secretary of State, and by God, Shultz has data to back up his viewpoint. He writes (in the Washington Post thisContinue reading “What would Reagan do about climate change?”
A song and prayer for rain on a hot spring day in Ojai
In the first chapter of the climate book that caught the imagination of The Guardian (and myself), called This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein argues that we are entering an era of climate change cognitive dissonance: Meanwhile, each supercharged natural disaster produces new irony-laden snapshots of a climate increasingly inhospitable to the very industries most responsibleContinue reading “A song and prayer for rain on a hot spring day in Ojai”
Good news for the world; bad news for California?
Today in the LA Times, Jay Famiglietti, a scientist who oversees the data gathered by the pair of gravity-measuring satellites known as GRACE, and who as a result has as good an understanding as anyone of California's groundwater supplies, revealed that California has but one year left of water: As difficult as it may beContinue reading “Good news for the world; bad news for California?”
NASA vs. Ted Cruz: Round One
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been spoiling for a fight with NASA administrators every since GOP triumphed in the elections last fall. He has taken the helm of the Senate subcommittee that overseas NASA, which flies under the awkward moniker of the Space, Science, and Competiveness Subcommittee. Cruz has made clear when he took over thatContinue reading “NASA vs. Ted Cruz: Round One”
Obama at Selma: the true meaning of America
In his extraordinary speech at Selma this past Saturday, President Obama said something I've never heard any other American President say in forty-odd years. He lionized those who walked into this country without papers, looking for a better life. They were the "hopeful strivers," he said, part of the nobility of this country, and deserved mention with the marchers atContinue reading “Obama at Selma: the true meaning of America”
In the end, Guardian editor puts Earth on front page
At the end of a distinguished career at The Guardian, editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger thinks back over his long tenure. With a few months left to serve one of the finest reporting and writing operations of news on the planet, does he have any regrets? Not many, he says, except that he thinks because of theContinue reading “In the end, Guardian editor puts Earth on front page”
GOP: Party of Big Pizza — and obesity?
Last year at this time I started working on a story about childhood obesity in a couple of small towns in Ventura County, and how different the picture looked in an upscale, mostly white town such as Ojai, where childhood obesity runs behind the national average of about 35%, and how it looks in the poorer, mostly Latino town of Santa Paula, where childhood obesity prevalence is among the highest in the state, at about 48%.
Interviewing the director of food services for Ojai's schools, I learned that she does not allow frozen pizza at all for her students eating school lunches, and did what she could to discourage parents from bringing pizza to after-school events. By contrast, I heard from a student at Santa Paula High, most students went for the frozen pizza at the high school every day.
Naturally I wondered if there was a connection to the high rates of obesity, but my adviser at USC/Annenberg's Health Reporting fellowship, discouraged me pointing the finger of blame at a single food for Santa Paula's obesity problem.
So my ears perked up when today I came across a characteristically strong but unusually wide-ranging column from Paul Krugman at the NYTimes, who argues that based on contributions, it's fair to say that Republicans are "the party of Big Energy and Big Food…and in particular, the party of Big Pizza."
Could caloric frozen pizza explain the obesity problem among kids eating free and reduced lunches?
Kit Stolz 