Global Day of Action on Climate Crisis

Next week the world's leaders will gather at Copenhagen to discuss climate change. Today, in light of the fact that "the people hit hardest by the climate change crisis -- the global poor -- will continue to be systematically excluded from formal discussions of how to address problems like water shortages and crop failures stemming from global warming" activists have organized the Global Day of Action on Climate Crisis.

I would like to see this continue. Such a concerted effort to maintain such a grassroots, bottom-up, approach to climate change is admirable.

Update: George Monbiot criticizes Canada's record on climate protection.

Read here as well.

George Orwell on the fact that emotions determine our beliefs and our actions more than rationality can ever hope to:

"The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions — racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war — which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action."

Very interesting discussion on the differing thinking styles of the globe's western and eastern people and how this may determine their respective adaptability to future problems.

Interesting article on journalism and philosophy.

William Blake:

"Labor well the minute particulars, take care of the little ones
He who would do good for another must do it in minute particulars
General Good is the plea of the Scoundrel Hypocrite and Flatterer
For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars"

Global food production

Currently something like a billion people live in extreme poverty and, with climate change and population growth, that number will rise unless we find innovative approaches to food production. The subject is something I know very little about, but I intend to look into it. People need to eat; that much is obvious. Read here for now.

Book Review

Here's my review of Dreaming Blackness: Black Nationalism and African American Public Opinion by Melanye T. Price.