Burner Trouble » Climate and Energy Blogs

To hell with the deniers

martin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:58:19 +0000

Check out Paul Krugman’s chart created to quell global warming deniers like George Will who use inaccurate and carefully selected datasets to make their case that warming is not taking place.

You might want to check out this image too.

temperatures 1880-2006

I’m not ‘Bothered By My Green Conscience’ (Franke James new book!)

martin — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:14:41 +0000

Franke’s visual essays have been spreading virally over the past few years with mentions on major blog sites like Kottke and Treehugger. Now they are gathered together in a book, Bothered by My Green Conscience (New Society) and I think it gives us a very good reason to still value having a bound and printed object that we can share without peering into a screen.

Franke’s essays are illustrated guides to her process of changing internally and externally- we literally see into the conscious and unconscious thought process as she decides to take real action in dealing with the personal effects of climate change. Not content to simply change lightbulbs and stop drinking bottled water, Franke (with her husband) sells her SUV, rips up her driveway and plants a garden (battling a confused bureaucracy in the process) and writes a moving letter to her unborn grandchildren, a letter bemoaning in advance our pitiful lack of effort to improve a world we’re destroying. This essay, To My Future Grandkids in 2020, goes beyond the humor of the situational earlier essays and paints a poignant picture as Franke attempts to explain our collective failure to change things now when change is required- an explanation written for a generation yet to come.

The essays must be seen to be appreciated. Combining text, illustration and collage, they express the messiness of creativity and the beauty of action. This really is a book to give to your friends and family. Though we’ve never met in person, Franke and I are friends, separated by 80 miles of Lake Ontario water. We’ve been corresponding for several years now and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing these essays appear on her blog. When the book arrived in my mail I realized that they were deeper and more thought-provoking when revisited in this format.

1/20/2009

martin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:59:18 +0000

So much has happened since I first started Burner Trouble in 2005. Frustrated by the total lack of movement on climate change, the idiocy of the Bush administration and their religious adherance to blocking science, enriching oil companies and denying climate change, I started writing my personal responses to these topics. I’m reminded that nearly all of the original 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, not Iraqis or Afghanis, and how we whisked the Saudi royalty out of the country even though there was a ban in international air travel. Of how we started a war to get our hands on a major oil producing country then totally failed to actually repair any infrastructure for producing that oil, spending hundreds of billions in the process for which there is no accounting. And how the company responsible for this mess was once managed by the ex-Vice President of the US.

It goes on and on- until yesterday. Today there is a new government, a new awareness and a new determination and it is bipartisan among the citizens. I have little faith that the Republican politicians get it though as they are already obstructing and delaying for purely partisan reasons. Their constituency does not want them to do this- polling shows widespread support for Obama amongst those who did not vote for him.

I stopped blogging regularly earlier this year. News coverage of climate change and energy issues became much more widespread. Things like the coal ash problem were not buried in the back pages, instead journalists did journalism and discovered that the Tennessee Valley Authority, the EPA and the coal industry had been hiding or minimizing the dangers of the 1800 coal ash dumps nationwide. This was encouraging.

So should I blog? I’m still deciding. I need a focus that excites me and I’m still thinking that over. But change has come.

Where the candidates stand on climate change and energy issues

martin — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 15:56:31 +0000

Earth2Tech posted a great roundup piece yesterday on where the candidates, on both sides, stand on climate change and energy issues. Ignore the Super Tuesday title- because there are still no clear winners this info is still very relevant.

The big loser: Romney who would (apparently since he basically has no policy in place and ‘won’t do anything to hurt business’) do nothing. Just like our current prez…

In a related note I saw a poll yesterday of 16 year olds (sorry no link-it was on the tube) that put environmental issues as their top concern. No wonder since they are going to live through this crazy century.