Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
“Beasts,” a hard-knock ecological fairy tale about the disappearing Louisiana bayou cultures and coastline, highlights the fragility of the region’s hurricane defenses and the resulting devastation of communities living on the flooding margins.
Extreme weather events, drought, wildfire, torrential rains, tornadoes, hurricanes, attributable to human-caused global warming, are costing society and insurers bilions of dollars worldwide. Mark Reynolds from Citizens Climate Lobby argues it is time for a carbon fee and dividend to even the market for fossil fuels and encourage clean renewable energy alternatives.
Wesleyan University academics argue “unnatural” forests, resulting from fire suppression policies, deplete water supplies and should be cut back. We disagree.
Can scientists engineer a biofuel that will replace the environmental and climate destroying and evermore expensive fossil fuels central to the functioning of our urbanized civilization? The answer is no and yes.
Southern California’s new Sustainable Communities Strategy plan posits that as a region, we have to grow up, not out. That doesn’t mean Hong Kong skyscrapers, but more apartments near light-rail stations and vibrant mixed-use areas like the ones in downtown Pasadena.
With “ambitious but achievable” transportation and land use proposals left off the table, California’s first climate protection mandated Sustainable Communities Strategy aimed high but did not quite achieve setting the San Diego region on a long-term course toward sustainability.
REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) purports to combat global warming by saving rainforests, but without reducing greenhouse gas emissions, nor putting the capitalist system and its excesses—the real causes of environmental disaster—on the table.