Book Review

Happy Earth Day. Here is my review of Heat: How to stop the planet from burning by George Monbiot (one of my very favourite journalists).

Did the Globe and Mail really just use the Icelandic volcano to justify increasing carbon emissions?

"Feeling guilty about the carbon-belching SUV you want to buy to annoy the pretentious Greenie next door? Don't. Britain's Environmental Transportation Association estimated that the flight clampdown had eliminated some 2.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere between April 15 and April 19 alone. But hasn't the Icelandic volcano emitted even more? Not so. It is spewing a mere 15,000 tonnes a day, according to one estimate. So go for it – the carbon gap is begging to be filled and your new Ford Explorer or Jeep Cherokee is just the machine to do it."

Incredible.

Interesting article on China's potentially-fraught relationship with Africa. I personally consider it an exploitative one.

Here's my commentary on malaria for the Georgia Straight.

There appears to be some headway in the fight to protect Indigenous rights.

From a fantastic essay, titled "The Mendacity of Hope", by Roger D. Hodge in the February issue of Harper's Magazine:

"Let us grant that Barack Obama is as intelligent as his admirers insist. What evidence do we have that he is also a moral virtuoso? What evidence do we possess that he is a good, or even a decent man? Yes, he can be eloquent, yet eloquence is no guarantee of wisdom or of virtue. Yes, he has a nice family, but that evinces a private morality. Public morality requires public action, and all available public evidence points to a man with the character of a common politician, whose singular ambition in life was to attain power; nothing in Barack Obama's political career suggests that he would ever willingly commit to a course of action that would cost him an election."

"Thinking like ethical people, dressing like ethical people, decorating our homes like ethical people makes not a damn of difference unless we also behave like ethical people." - George Monbiot, in Heat: How to stop the planet from burning.

Climate-change deniers

From The New Yorker: "A survey released by researchers at George Mason University found that more than a quarter of television weathercasters agree with the statement “Global warming is a scam,” and nearly two-thirds believe that, if warming is occurring, it is caused “mostly by natural changes.”"