You've probably all heard about, and/or seen, KONY 2012; here's an NYT article about it, and see http://audelhi.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/kony2012/ for a critical commentary suggesting that, well, viewers should get situated, both in the context of Uganda and as Americans.

So, for those of us who would like to find ways for people to have ready alternatives to car transportation, the good news is that Oregonians, and to some extent Americans are driving less. What's interesting, as this article points out, is we don't really know why, and it doesn't seem to relate to gas prices. It may just be an aging demography. Do you think it's a sign that people are going green(er)?

What do you think of this decision by the OR legislature not to fund the Oregon Sustainability Center? Though certain key figures downplay the decision, this could be the end of that dream -- which some say was not a worthwhile dream anyway.

Here's an important 40th anniversary in the history of US environmentalism; would you agree with the author of this post, now that we know what we know 40 years later?

Check out this interesting debate, with lots of money already invested!, over the possibility of a high-tech fix to global warming by scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere, once rejected out of hand but now seriously considered given our failure to enact policies to limit GHG emissions...amazing how the discussion changes in a matter of a few short years!...

Just bumped into this TOE (Theory Of Everything) related to environmental studies...what do you think of it??

There's an interesting difference between (some) meteorologists and (almost all) climatologists over the anthropogenic factor in climate change; this article discusses a recent meeting in Portland primarily attended by skeptical meteorologists. Why the difference? Is it that meteorologists tend to focus on weather vs. climate, i.e., attend to different spatiotemporal scales? Or is it something about who decides to become a meteorologist vs. climatologist and what sort of training is necessary?

Not only are our political leaders talking less about doing something about climate change; the American public seem to be a lot less worried about it too. This article discusses why, and links to a recent Pew survey that chronicles the decline in public interest. This big change in political and popular discourse around climate change offers a good opportunity to rethink environmental studies and environmentalism as we move forward in these changed times.

Interesting thoughts on environmentalism taking place in Orion magazine these days...see essay, online comments, and audio discussion.

Just heard this podcast, and it's a really great example of situated research, in this case on fracking in Pennsylvania. The story is divided into two acts: the first concerns the role of scientists in the controversy, and the second concerns the politics of small towns caught up in gas exploration. I'd strongly recommend it, if only to suggest to your families over the winter break what situated research can look like!

Columnist Charles Blow begins by comparing the haves and have nots to climate change: "Is income inequality becoming the new global warming? In other words, is this another case where the facts of an existential threat lose traction among a weary American public as deniers attempt to reduce them to partisan opinions?" I suspect you can guess how he answers that question: as he gloomily concludes, "If denial is a river, it runs through doomed societies." Maybe it's time to better understand denial in all its forms, not just denial of anthropogenic environmental change, if we want to understand why such serious threats receive so little action.

Puzzling headline, no? But truly, this was an important study involving golden shiners (a common minnow), and the conclusions the researchers reached concerned how "uninformed agents can promote democratic outcomes in collective decision problems," or in less technical jargon, how "ignorance can promote democracy." Certainly intriguing in terms of boundary-crossing between the natural and the human sciences! But not without dispute over its relevance to the world of human politics, as noted at the bottom of the article. Relevance to ENVS is clear: we welcome ideas that cross the natural/social sciences, but we subject them to scrutiny too. (And, we worry about ignorance as much as anyone else does.)

[A repost...didn't work first time...] For those of you considering ENVS-ish winter break reading, here's an informative interview of Naomi Klein, whose November article "Capitalism vs. the Climate" in The Nation (by no means some right-wing rag) argues that "passionate corporate and conservative foes of curbs on greenhouse gases are *right* [my emphasis] in asserting that a meaningful response to global warming would be a fatal blow to free markets and capitalism." Revkin's helpful interview links to a number of recent sources in the climate policy debate.

Our ENVS 490 class this semester has examined a number of environmental conflicts in Oregon, many in its rural areas. This article discusses how serious the economic situation has become in these areas -- many of which were dependent on natural resource industries -- and includes an animated graphic to suggest that things have only been getting worse in the last few years.

A fascinating brief video of a very strange man standing right near where the shots were fired at President Kennedy...and ultimately a strong argument against believing in conspiracy theories supported by the most convincing of anecdotal evidence. Don't we do this all the time when sleuthing out the eco-enemy?

An interesting exchange by two philosophers re. the relationship between the humanities and the sciences. Our students in ENVS 220 may have a good deal to bring to this discussion!

The title phrase is a well-known book title as well, from Robert Heilbroner's Worldly Philosophers of 1953. Both this article and Heilbroner's book, however, are talking about economics. These authors argue that economics has, over the last several decades, approached problems much like dentists, "modest people who look at a small part of the body but remove a lot of pain." For all its virtues, this approach provides no nuance nor guidance when everyone plainly realizes that our economic system is a mess, and we need informed people to ask big questions about it. They see the Occupy movement as asking these questions, and call on economists to offer answers. This recommendation rings at the heart of a liberal arts education, and is why in ENVS 220 we collectively struggle to connect the data and methods we work with to larger theories and frameworks, larger philosophical stances that remind us there are choices to be made in how to understand and fix this world.

This week in ENVS 220 we'll be discussing a variety of qualitative analysis methods-including narrative analysis, typically consigned to the humanistic side of the Great Divide. But this article tracks a neuroscience pioneer who discovered how spinning coherent stories is how a part of our brains works...no matter how partial or factual the evidence. Perhaps culture and the mind work in similar ways, but at different scales?

No, this not a Mac vs. PC rant. According to Jobs' biographer, he lacked the sheer brainpower of a Bill Gates, but had something far greater in many ways: genius, or at least ingenuity. And this knack is described in ways that resonate with our ENVS Program learning goals, including a creative blending of the humanities and sciences and attention to visual modes of thinking. So if you are still worried about your physics friends getting jobs and you getting nowhere, this Jobs may have a lesson for you.

Here is a story we have heard many times for many different species; what have we learned from these other efforts that may help us successfully conserve the chambered nautilus?