[Dialogue] Are We Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History?

Sat Jan 21 13:10:09 EST 2006

Thank you, Jean, 

for sharing this magazine with us. I'm stuck dumb by the beauty of the
writing and the art, and the profound impact of the stories they tell; the
connections to life and death - of people, the land, the consequences of
choices for the future. Progress Hits Home could be written about Reno; it's
what's happening here. The articles on Appalachia are amazing. This is one
of the first instances that I remember statistics turning into poetry. At
the moment, I am stunned - like a deer in the headlights. 

Go online, go to "This Issue" and read them all.

Have a good weekend.

Pat

Patricia Tuecke, Sierra Circle Consulting

775-333-6998.  ptuecke at nvbell.net

  _____  

From: Dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:Dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Jean C. Smith
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 8:58 AM
To: Colleague Dialogue
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Are We Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History?

Check out the article and paintings in the current issues of Orion
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/06-1om/McKibbenRockman.html

Imagine your favorite place under water! Permanently!

If you do not know this magazine, you should get the free issue.  it is one
of the best all round magazines going.

Jean

_________________________________

Jean C. Smith
Wild Connections Coordinator
Upper Arkansas and South Platte Project
1420 Pinewood Road
Florissant CO 80816
www.wildconnections.org
jeancsmith at peakinet.net
719-686-5905

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease,
avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods;
but he cannot save them from fools."  John Muir
______________________________________________________

----- Original Message ----- 

From: jim rippey <mailto:jimripsr at qwest.net>  

To: Dialogue <mailto:dialogue at wedgeblade.net>  

Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 8:47 AM

Subject: [Dialogue] Are We Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History?

As a long-time reporter/editor, I thought this an interesting and
frightening take on global warming.  It concludes with this thought:  "It
may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could
choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the
process of doing."  The failure of the United States to get serious about
climate change is unforgivable, a human folly beyond imagining.  

Jim Rippey in Bellevue, NE, where winter is still playing peekaboo.  It's
supposed to be a sunny 48 degrees this afternoon.

.... OK, now shall we talk about Intelligent Design?

------------------------------------

Is It Warm in Here?
We Could Be Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History

By David Ignatius
Wednesday, January 18, 2006; A17

One of the puzzles if you're in the news business is figuring out what's
"news." The fate of your local football team certainly fits the definition.
So does a plane crash or a brutal murder. But how about changes in the
migratory patterns of butterflies?

Scientists believe that new habitats for butterflies are early effects of
global climate change -- but that isn't news, by most people's measure.
Neither is declining rainfall in the Amazon, or thinner ice in the Arctic.
We can't see these changes in our personal lives, and in that sense, they
are abstractions. So they don't grab us the way a plane crash would -- even
though they may be harbingers of a catastrophe that could, quite literally,
alter the fundamentals of life on the planet. And because they're not
"news," the environmental changes don't prompt action, at least not in the
United States.

What got me thinking about the recondite life rhythms of the planet, and not
the 24-hour news cycle, was a recent conversation with a scientist named
Thomas E. Lovejoy, who heads the H. John Heinz III Center for Science,
Economics and the Environment. When I first met Lovejoy nearly 20 years ago,
he was trying to get journalists like me to pay attention to the changes in
the climate and biological diversity of the Amazon. He is still trying, but
he's beginning to wonder if it's too late.

Lovejoy fears that changes in the Amazon's ecosystem may be irreversible.
Scientists reported last month that there is an Amazonian drought apparently
caused by new patterns in Atlantic currents that, in turn, are similar to
projected climate change. With less rainfall, the tropical forests are
beginning to dry out. They burn more easily, and, in the continuous feedback
loops of their ecosystem, these drier forests return less moisture to the
atmosphere, which means even less rain. When the forest trees are deprived
of rain, their mortality can increase by a factor of six, and similar
devastation affects other species, too.

"When do you wreck it as a system?" Lovejoy wonders. "It's like going up to
the edge of a cliff, not really knowing where it is. Common sense says you
shouldn't discover where the edge is by passing over it, but that's what
we're doing with deforestation and climate change."

Lovejoy first went to the Amazon 40 years ago as a young scientist of 23. It
was a boundless wilderness, the size of the continental United States, but
at that time it had just 2 million people and one main road. He has returned
more than a hundred times, assembling over the years a mental time-lapse
photograph of how this forest primeval has been affected by man. The
population has increased tenfold, and the wilderness is now laced with
roads, new settlements and economic progress. The forest itself, impossibly
rich and lush when Lovejoy first saw it, is changing.

For Lovejoy, who co-edited a pioneering 1992 book, "Global Warming and
Biological Diversity," there is a deep sense of frustration. A crisis he and
other scientists first sensed more than two decades ago is drifting toward
us in what seems like slow motion, but fast enough that it may be impossible
to mitigate the damage.

The best reporting of the non-news of climate change has come from Elizabeth
Kolbert in the New Yorker. Her three-part series last spring lucidly
explained the harbingers of potential disaster: a shrinking of Arctic sea
ice by 250 million acres since 1979; a thawing of the permafrost for what
appears to be the first time in 120,000 years; a steady warming of Earth's
surface temperature; changes in rainfall patterns that could presage severe
droughts of the sort that destroyed ancient civilizations. This month she
published a new piece, "Butterfly Lessons," that looked at how these
delicate creatures are moving into new habitats as the planet warms. Her
real point was that all life, from microorganisms to human beings, will have
to adapt, and in ways that could be dangerous and destabilizing.

So many of the things that pass for news don't matter in any ultimate sense.
But if people such as Lovejoy and Kolbert are right, we are all but ignoring
the biggest story in the history of humankind. Kolbert concluded her series
last year with this shattering thought: "It may seem impossible to imagine
that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy
itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing." She's right.
The failure of the United States to get serious about climate change is
unforgivable, a human folly beyond imagining.

davidignatius at washpost.com

C 2006 The Washington Post Company

  _____  

_______________________________________________
Dialogue mailing list
Dialogue at wedgeblade.net
http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/dialogue_wedgeblade.net

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20060121/05e54515/attachment.htm