Today a fifty-year-old charity founded by the descendants of John Rockefeller, of Standard Oil wealth, disinvested their funds from Exxon Mobil and accused the company of misleading the public to enable the company to damage the climate. In a statement the Rockefeller Family Fund called the company morally reprehensible and said: “Evidence appears to suggest that theContinue reading “Rockefeller charity calls Exxon “morally reprehensible,” disinvests”
Category Archives: activism
When will we start to see ice sheet disintegration?
James Hansen has published hundreds of scientific papers in his long and distinguished career as “the father of climate change awareness,” as described in The Guardian. With a team he published another one this morning, but this one is different. For one, although Hansen organized the effort, he is one of a team of 18 expertsContinue reading “When will we start to see ice sheet disintegration?”
Bee-loving in Ojai — for good reason
To report now and again for a small town newspaper means documenting something that happened or is happening in a small town, but sometimes what at first seems purely local turns out to be much bigger — even international in scope. From the Ojai Valley News: A move is under way in Ojai to loosen restrictionsContinue reading “Bee-loving in Ojai — for good reason”
“The forks in the road”: Park Williams
Happy to say I found a way to profile the adventurous young forest ecologist Park Williams for the Santa Barbara Independent. The on-line version is the complete version of what I wrote; the print version is somewhat shorter. But let me add a couple of images and notes, because this story has a lot ofContinue reading ““The forks in the road”: Park Williams”
Woody Guthrie on Trump: “Racial Hate”
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and excellent Facebooker, quotes the fierce American folk singer, poet, and labor activist Woody Guthrie on an important man from the past who is still with us today. Donald Trump and his father Fred. Quote of the day: “I suppose Old Man Trump knows Just how much… Racial Hate heContinue reading “Woody Guthrie on Trump: “Racial Hate””
Obama: Hated by the GOP, taken for granted by Dems
On the eve of the last State of the Union address to be delivered by President Obama, Jonathan Chait of New York magazine points out how little love he gets from those who elected him. Here is one of the oddities of the last seven years. Barack Obama won a clear majority in both hisContinue reading “Obama: Hated by the GOP, taken for granted by Dems”
Ken Burns on Yosemite
A couple of years ago Ken Burns gave a talk in San Gabriel about one of his favorite subjects, Yosemite, and said I thought many wise things, most especially: “This couldn’t have happened any place else. It is the Declaration of Independence applied to the landscape; the full expression of the democratic experience,” Burns said.Continue reading “Ken Burns on Yosemite”
Climate demonstrations: 2005 and 2015
Ten years ago world leaders and world powers gathered in Montreal in ostensible hopes of hammering out an agreement to reduce emissions and reduce the harms of global warming. Little or nothing came out of the meetings, in part because of the adamant refusal to deal with the issue on the part of the Bush/Cheney administration. That same administrationContinue reading “Climate demonstrations: 2005 and 2015”
A day in Paris for the climate
Where does one start with the news from Paris, from COP21? With the speech from the President? Images from the fantastically imaginative demonstrations from the day before, in defiance of police authority, of shoes left in protest in the Place de la Republique? Or with the fatalism of so many scientists, who agree that theContinue reading “A day in Paris for the climate”
The inevitability of warming: a matter of degrees
In Tales of a Warming Planet in today’s review section of the Sunday NYTimes, Curt Stager makes some central points about climate change well-known and accepted by climate scientists, but still new to most people: Let me cite just three, in byte-sized form: 1) Roughly one-eighth of the carbon in your flesh, hair and bonesContinue reading “The inevitability of warming: a matter of degrees”
Kit Stolz 