Specifically, the enviro community has long had a tendency to praise those who make the greatest personal changes, and comparatively less to those who make the greatest societal changes.  I compost.  I am a vegan.  I ride my bike.  I bring my own bags to the grocery store.  I knit my own hemp mumus.  

Don't get me wrong - taking personal responsibility is a good thing.  But when we praise those individual actions, we lose sight of the scale of our environmental challenges.  Because if that's all you do, you basically aren't making any meaningful difference.  (In the sense that even if you completely eliminate the environmental impact of 1 person - AKA, one six billionth of the planet - you haven't really done anything material.)  What we need is leverage.

Getting back to the journalistic angle, I think that this "environmental ascetics vs. everyone else" is simply too tempting a journalistic story.  And so we see huge attention paid to the square footage of Al Gore's house, with no corresponding discussion of the way that Al Gore has leveraged his individual beliefs into a much larger force.  I, for one, am fairly well convinced that even if Al Gore's personal footprint is 100x the average, he's still had a net positive impact given the thousands of people who've changed their behavior after hearing him talk / seeing his movie / etc.  But the blame for only focusing on his house is not solely the fault of Fox News.

So yeah - I agree.  But we in the enviro community bear some culpability for making environmental responsibility a personal rather than collective story.

I knit my own hemp mumus.

for my first big belly laugh of of the day!

Thanks, Sean.

There is another, easily observed phenomenon that people respond to biography.   I participate on an email list devoted to ceramic art.  I happen to think that some issues of aesthetics are important. However, people do not respond to those.  However, when another writer lays out a little autobiography for everyone to read, the community seems to want to participate.  The key word here is probably community, belonging together.

So, the "what did I give up" element is always going to be there and it will always play out in the same way unless we are writing about a Wangari Maathai or a Muhammad Yunus.

Wes Rolley CoChair - EcoAction Committee Green Party US

As a form of constructive criticism.  Make the mass media journalists more aware of new climate information, solutions, and strategies for their deployment.  Can they ignore a call like that?

Yes they can!

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Keep in mind that the journalists are also getting most of what they know, like everyone else in America, from television, newspapers and magazines. It's kind of incestuous, which leads to a general degradation of information.

It seems that none of them stoop to reading the Gristmill with their morning coffee or they would know what's up. It seems to me that the news/entertainment industry is consistently lagging behind the blogosphere now, which exists primarily to critique ideas, as opposed to entertain. I watched the video while working because it was too painfully slow.

Stern is one poor public speaker, "I, I, just, just, uh, uh, my, my, to ah, ah, is, er, organized around, ah, .." especially when compared to Jason. Go to 1:17 in the video and listen to him chop a sentence into about a hundred ers and ahs.

I thought it was interesting that Woolsey has solar panels and drives a plug-in Prius converted by A123. All the advisers probably would if they could afford to do so. He kept talking up flex fuel cars in the name of national security, which upon close inspection, is a really stupid concept, although one that appeals to a conservative base.

Although, all of the candidates all acknowledge climate change, the question is, which one, if any, will have the cajounes to put their money where their mouth is. McCain just doesn't seem all that bright to me--the way he flip flops on virtually everything. God knows, we don't need another dummy in office.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

What is worrisome is that decisions on nuclear are being made with less open, honest, and public argumentation than the constellation of threats they involve justifies.

a sibilant intake of breath

With so few climate-related questions posed in the televised candidate debates so far, SEJ organized this session at the National Press Club in Washington to help journalists of all stripes - not just environmental specialists - draw a bead on climate change as a campaign issue.

Judging from the SRO crowd late on a sunny Friday afternoon, there's a lot of interest in doing just that. I wish there'd been time for more questions - and maybe a live interactive hookup so some of Grist's savvy staff and readers could get in on the quizzing.  Maybe next time - assuming there is one.

My most fervent hope is that there'll be other chances between now and November for all of us to get our questions answered, so the voters can appreciate what's at stake on this critical issue when they go to the polls.  For that, we'll need the best efforts of traditional and new media alike.

Tim Wheeler, SEJ President

1. High Country News (and their syndicated network of "Writers on the Range").  This periodical is an AWESOME source of top-notch environmental journalism, particularly for those who have an interest in Western U.S. issues.  Even for those who don't care about the West, it serves as a wonderful model (in my mind) of how environmental journalism can be done right.  

2. Why is it so bad for environmental reporters to ask presidential advisers questions about "population"?  I am not aware of a single environmental crisis that is not being aggravated by population growth, and that will never be "solved" without also stabilizing the global population.  Are you?

I think you're being a bit unfair here. It's not just environmental journalists; it's the whole lot of them.

(See the LA Times)

Scenic pics at http://Lhfotoware.blogspot.com