Ecological books
My mother recently asked me to suggest some books to read to better understand global environmental problems. Here is the text of the e-mail I sent to her.
I have been thinking about a good book for you about the environment. While there are lots of good environment books I can't think of one in particular that gives a good overview of the problem.
I suspect Al Gore's book that accompanies the movie [An Inconvenient Truth] would be an excellent introduction to climate change. I haven't read it though. There is another recent book about climate change called Heat by George Monbiot which would probably also be good.
There is a book called The Great U-Turn by Edward Goldsmith which is probably the closest to what you might want. Although it was written about thirty years ago it does a very good job of outlining the greatest environmental problems facing the Earth. It may be difficult to find in a bookshop or library, but it is available to read for free on the internet.
A couple of other books which have influenced me a lot are Ancient Futures
by Helena Norberg-Hodge and Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher. They offer an alternative way of looking at the world and explain some of the roots of the environmental crisis. Books by Vandana Shiva are also very good, especially for understanding how women and the poor bear a greater burden of many environmental problems. [some articles by Vandana Shiva are available here]
Technorati tags: books |
ecology |
environmentLabels: books, environment
What I should study
Your Learning Style: Curious and Brilliant
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You are a very abstract learner. You can grasp even the most complex theories.
You Should Study:
Astronomy
Biology
Chemistry
Computer Science
Linguistics
Mathematics
Philosophy
Physics
Psychology
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UPDATE: I replaced the original result with a new one. The change was from "Innovative and Independent" to "Curious and Brilliant". I think it better reflects me, although there was a fair degree of overlap in the results. I got the new one by changing the answer to one question:
For you, choosing what classes to take:
* Pretty easy. You know what you're interested in.
* Is difficult. You change your mind a lot.
Yes, I do change my mind a lot.
Labels: personal
The power of ideas
I have recently read a couple of books and seen one movie that show how powerful ideas can be.
The first is the book
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt. Levitt is an economist that asks questions that most people would never think of. For example, why do most crack dealers live with their mothers? In doing so he reveals that what the commonly accepted explanation for things is not necessarily the best one. While Levitt's theories are firmly grounded in mainstream economics theory I like his way of thinking.
Levitt cites
The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell a number of times and it has obviously influenced his work. It was a book I first heard about several years ago. The sub-title of the book is "How little things can make a big difference".
Like Levitt, Gladwell thinks outside the box. His ideas are applicable to a number of fields, most notably marketing, management, education and activism.
One of the important ideas in The Tipping Point is the idea of "connectors". These are people that have a large number of contacts and a disproportionate impact in the spreading of information. Most people have a small circle of friends and often those friends are also friends with each other. Connectors, on the other hand, have contact with a wide range of people. Their contacts are not limited to certain location or people with certain interests.
Obviously these people not only talk to more people, but the people they talk to a wider range of people. This is a key in making ideas spread.
Al Gore would easily qualify as a connector. A long career in politics including eight years as Vice-President of the United States would have bought him into contact with innumerable people around the world. And when he talks people listen to what he has to say.
He has made a documentary called
An Inconvenient Truth about climate change. Interestingly Gore had a professor while he was at university in the 1960s who was one of the first people to measure CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Gore has known about and understood the problem for a long time.
He explains it all in a very clear manner in the film. Anyone who doesn't understand climate change or quite believe that its real should be convinced by the end of this movie. If they remain unconvinced then surely it would be because of political ideologies that remain unchangeable.
Action on climate change has been delayed for too long because those with vested interests in the status quo have been very successful in sowing seeds of doubt about whether climate change is really happening. Hopefully this film will act as a tipping point and convince enough people that it is real and something needs to be done now!
I highly recommend this film and also
The Tipping Point.
Technorati tags: Al Gore | climate change | global warming | An Inconvenient Truth | freakonomics | The Tipping Point | ideasLabels: books, climate change, movies
"Balanced" reporting is biased
I often think society is overly obsessed with bias in the media. Or perhaps to put it in another way it rails at one kind of bias and ignores another.
First, there can really be no such thing as an entirely objective reporting, or if there was it would be too bland and uninformative. Second, different weight needs to be given to different opinions. The same amount of words or time doesn't need to be given to opposing views if they have little credibility or merit.
Sharon Beder wrote a great opinion piece about this in
The Age yesterday.
The officious policing of impartiality and balance will mean ensuring that statements by those challenging the establishment (government or business) are balanced with statements by those whom they are criticising, though not necessarily the other way round.
Too much emphasis on objectivity in news and current affairs can lead journalists to leave out interpretations and analysis, which might be construed as personal views, and to play it safe by reporting events without explaining their meaning and keeping stories light and superficial so as not to offend anyone.
Journalists who accurately report what their sources say, can effectively remove responsibility for their stories onto the people they interview and quote. The ideal of objectivity therefore encourages uncritical reporting of official statements and those of authority figures. In this way, the biases of individual journalists are avoided but institutional biases are reinforced.
The enforcement of impartiality tends to give powerful industry spokespeople guaranteed access to the media, no matter how flimsy their argument or how transparently self-interested. No such access is guaranteed to critics.
No where is this more evident than in reporting on climate change. Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus (not to mention clearly visible evidence) that climate change is happening, media reports often include the opinions of pseudo-scientific experts who disagree that climate change is real. Often these experts are funded by fossil fuel companies or other groups with vested interests.
Beder writes,
In their attempts to be balanced on a scientific story, journalists may use any opposing view even when it has little scientific credibility in the wider scientific community. This can be very misleading. In the case of global warming, the fossil fuel industry has taken advantage of this convention by funding a handful of dissidents and demanding that they are given equal media coverage despite their poor standing in the scientific community.
This strategy of exaggerating the uncertainties and confusing the public has ensured that governments such as the Howard Government have been able to avoid doing anything to prevent global warming, despite the overwhelming evidence that significant global warming is likely without government intervention.
It is only recently, after many precious years have been lost, that the most intransigent governments have been forced to admit that action must be taken to avoid global warming. Some ask why this has not occurred earlier. Clearly part of the problem has been the ability of vested interests to manipulate the media by holding up the rod of balance and impartiality.
There has been a noticeable shift in media reporting on climate change in the past year or so. It may be decades too late, but hopefully those who dispute climate change will soon belong in the same category as creation scientists or flat earthers. Then we can start working to solve this problem and not just argue about it.
Technorati tags: climate change |
global warming |
media bias |
journalism |
Sharon BederLabels: climate change, media
