BLOG… Post #125: Our Deteriorating Environment: Is Anybody Listening? 5 Aug 201627 Feb 2017 Since beginning my blog in January 2014, I have written several pieces on the urgency of dealing with climate change and other large-scale environmental challenges—challenges that I have argued constitute…
American Politics and the World… Post #101: The Paris Climate-Change Agreement: Hold the Champagne 15 Dec 201527 Feb 2017 Ban Ki-moon called it “a monumental success for the planet and its people.” Secretary of State Kerry said it was “a tremendous victory for all of our citizens—not for…
BLOG… Post #95: Corporate Irresponsibility and Climate Change 14 Oct 201527 Feb 2017 Research by the Union of Concerned Scientists (ucs.org) finds that 90 global organizations account for about two-thirds of industrial carbon pollution, and that historically, over 12 percent of such…
BLOG… Post #92: Two Cheers for Humanity 17 Sep 201527 Feb 2017 In the last few days the notion of a common humanity, a cornerstone of human-interest thinking, has received strong support from two very different but highly visible sources: Pope Francis’…
BLOG… Post #87: The Number One Global Security Issue? Climate Change 12 Aug 201527 Feb 2017 In my very first blog posted in February 2014, I noted that US leaders were finally categorizing climate change as a global threat on the order of weapons of mass…
American Politics and the World… Post #77: Keep It in the Ground 13 May 201527 Feb 2017 On January 17 the New York Times reported that, to appease environmentalists, the Obama administration would “ban drilling in portions of the Arctic Ocean’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.” But in…
BLOG… Post #71 –Should We “Balance” Threats to the Environment? 23 Mar 201527 Feb 2017 How does a US administration promote greater energy independence, protect its fragile environment, and make both oil executives and environmentalists happy? President Obama’s answer is to give something to everyone,…
BLOG… Post #53 – AR5: Another Urgent Report on Climate Change 12 Nov 201427 Feb 2017 When we consider benchmarks that will help explain why the world ignored dire warnings of climate change, we will want to dwell on AR5, the fifth assessment report of the…
BLOG… Post #50 – The Lessons of Ebola 24 Oct 201427 Feb 2017 The battle against Ebola is in danger of being lost. A top official of MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders), the lead NGO in West Africa with about…
BLOG… Post #49 – “I’m Not a Scientist, But…” 13 Oct 201427 Feb 2017 The People’s Climate March in New York City and (so it was declared) in 155 other countries has come and gone. Climate change, unfortunately, parades on. While people marched—an estimated…
BLOG… Post #33 – The Nuclear Danger and the Case for Nuclear Abolition (Part Two) 8 Jul 201427 Feb 2017 So far as I know, every post-World War II US president has come to realize the awesome responsibility that accompanies presiding over a massive nuclear-weapon arsenal. And every one of…
BLOG… Post #32 – The Nuclear Danger, or Why We Should Still Worry about the Bomb (Part One) 2 Jul 201427 Feb 2017 When is the last time you gave serious thought to the dangers posed by nuclear weapons? Probably not since those awful years under Ronald Reagan, when it seemed we were…
BLOG… Post #26-What Works? Good Neighbors Find Common Ground 9 Jun 201427 Feb 2017 It’s a powerful story of grassroots organizing. “Jane Kleeb vs. Keystone” details the tenacious efforts of one person in Nebraska to reach across the usual environmentalist-conservative divide in order to…
BLOG… Post #20 – Another Climate-Change Warning, and the Fracking “Solution” 8 May 201427 Feb 2017 With the release of the National Climate Assessment, we now have, by my count, four major scientific studies of climate change within the past year. All of them are in…
BLOG… Post #8: We Were Warned 21 Mar 201427 Feb 2017 How ironic that during the same week that scientists confirmed the Big Bang theory of the origins of the universe, other scientists confirmed that we are close to destroying…
In the Human Interest - Mel Gurtov 