The Future is Green

Back by popular demand: Stephen Colbert on greenwashing by oil companies

There's nothing I can possibly add to this. Just watch and enjoy.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Prescott Oil Loves the Earth

There's still no such thing as clean coal: The Coen brothers' new video for This is Reality.org

If you're a fan of the Joel and Ethan Coen (The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?) or if you're just fed up with the coal industry's laughable attempts to portray itself as pro-environment, you'll get a kick out of this new video by the Cohen brothers - the latest in a series of clever 30 second commercials produced by ThisIsReality.org to debunk the myth of clean coal technology.

There is still no such thing as clean coal.

Giant asteroid on collision course with Earth!

Okay. Now that I've got your attention, I have a question for you. If a mile-wide asteroid actually were heading for planet Earth, how much media attention do you think it would get?

The answer is obvious. It would be the lead story in every news broadcast, and would appear above the fold on the front page of every newspaper in the world until either; a. it struck, or b. scientists figured out how to prevent it.

And in the second instance, what portion of our resources, human and otherwise, would we devote to implementing plans to avert such a catastrophe? Would anyone ask if it was worth the money?

Yet this is exactly analogous to the situation we currently face. The climate crisis is potentially no less dire than the effects of a civilization-disrupting asteroid impact. So where are the headlines? Why are we not more worried?

This week I had the opportunity to speak to a group of college students at the University of Hartford. Their visual communication class had just completed a project designed to encourage their peers to act more sustainably and I was invited to critique their work. There were posters and other materials advocating things like changing light-bulbs, driving less, conserving water, and several other worthy ideas. Some of the work was quite good, with catchy slogans and attractive graphics. But I couldn't bring myself to give them much of a pat on the back for their efforts.

Changing light bulbs is all well and good, but I wanted to change the subject. Why aren't you more angry, I asked them. You are about to inherit a very fucked-up planet and you should be really pissed off. You should be marching in the streets. You should be organizing protests, sit-ins, moratoriums. You should be taking over the administration building and demanding change. You should be furious.

I am a child of the 60's, I told them. When I was in college the Vietnam war was raging. It was all we could think about. Students everywhere were united in opposition to the war. We were consumed with rage. We were mad as hell and we weren't going to take it anymore.

A whole generation took to the streets, staged protests - some peaceful, some not - and demanded change. And it wasn't only students. Millions of people raised their voices in unison and were heard. Activism played a major role in ending American involvement in that war. Nixon and Kissinger would have continued to prosecute the war but it became clear that the country would no longer support it. When people make enough noise, (enough being the operative word) government has no choice but to respond.

So why are we so passive about global warming? If left unchecked, the cost in human suffering will be no less than from any war. It will be greater. Where is the anger? Where are the protests? Are we sheep?

Baaaaaa.

Personally, I blame the media. During the Vietnam era disturbing images of war appeared in every newspaper every day. Every night on TV we saw flag-draped coffins bearing the remains of young Americans being disgorged from airplanes. Back then the media did its job - we were not allowed to forget for a single day the cost of war.

There was something else, too. It felt personal. Very personal. I and millions of young men of my generation were subject to the draft. Like everyone else, I knew there was a very real possibility I might suddenly find myself on a battlefield in southeast Asia. Once there it was not at all unlikely that I might be killed, or worse, have to kill others. I was lucky, though.

Students today have nothing so tangible to concentrate the mind. But the threat to their future is, if anything, greater. Had I been sent to Vietnam there was a better than even chance that I could have returned home to resume a normal life. But none of us will be able to escape the consequences of a warming planet.

When are we going to do something about it?

Mass transit: a sustainable solution to economic recovery. A Republican shows us how - go figure!

  It's not often that I find reason to praise conservative Republicans, but I'm making an exception for Pat McCrory, the mayor of Charlotte, NC. Largely through his willingness to stick his neck out on an issue he, himself, thought might get him run out of town on a rail, he successfully championed the creation of Lynx, a state-of--the-art light rail system that should serve as a shining example of what US cities should aspire to.

As documented last week in an excellent segment of the PBS television program, NOW, entitled Stimulus Roadblock, McCrory seems to have gotten everything right about what mass transit can do for a city and how to make it work.

Charlotte's downtown, which prior to the opening of Lynx had largely been a 9 to 5 destination for office workers, has blossomed into a vibrant, walkable, mixed-use urban environment. Businesses are thriving and real estate values have surged. In some previously troubled areas that are now connected to the city center by Linx, home prices have doubled - in this economy.

One of the things that McCrory understood about making transit work is that not only do the trains have to be comfortable, attractive, and on time, they also have to be linked to residential areas by high quality pedestrian access. As a result, ridership of the new system is nearly double what was originally anticipated, and new transit-oriented residential development has been encouraged by the city and embraced by developers.

Charlotte's successful experiment with mass transit is a paradigm of how stimulus money could be spent to create sustainable, long-term economic development. The problem, though, as pointed out by the Now segment, is that it is much easier for cities and states to get Federal money to build roads than transit systems.

In fact, cities applying for transit funding in the stimulus plan are, in effect, penalized for their effforts. This must change. Let your representatives in Congress know that you support funding for mass transit.

I highly recommend watching this piece, which you can see here.

Set your Tivos

This is a little off topic, but author, Jonah Lehrer will be on The Colbert Report tonight discussing his new book, "How We Decide." Lehrer writes a fascinating blog about how we tick called The Frontal Cortex, to which I've become addicted of late. His first book, "Proust was a Neuroscientist" made a big impression, so I'm really looking forward to reading the new one. Maybe it will provide some clues about how to get people to decide to embrace sustainability. In any event, Lehrer is a brilliant guy who's writing is always thought provoking and fun to read. Set your Tivos.