climate

Women do things differently than men. While this may seem obvious, scientists continue to examine the phenomenon and the reasons for it. Recently, researchers concluded that women are more plugged into social media than men. And now, another study shows that women may be the key to reducing climate pollution. A recent study published in Social Science Research says that efforts to improve gender equality around the world may help curtail climate change and environmental degradation.

The reason for the correlation is unknown, but nations in which women have achieved a higher political status — measured by female representation in government and the years that women have had a right to vote — tend to emit less CO2 per capita. It appears that women make different decisions than men in regard to the planet.

Jeff Goodell was a guest at the Energy Symposium in 2007 and is a regular contributor to Rolling Stone. In his latest piece, Jeff makes a list called: Environment - Ten Things Obama Must Do. Number 9 is Pardon Tim DeChristopher.

"When Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, he declared that future generations would remember it as "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." More than three years later, the oceans are still rising and our planet has done more howling – in the form of extreme weather – than healing."

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Tim DeChristopher, two-time Mountainfilm in Telluride festival special guest and well-known climate activist, was sentenced on July 26 in Federal Court in Salt Lake City to two years in prison for his activism in disrupting a corrupted oil-gas lease sale by BLM in Utah.  Immediately after sentencing Tim was taken by Federal Marshalls directly to jail to begin serving his sentence.  Over 200 people were at the Federal Court House in support of Tim and his climate awareness actions.  Upon hearing the sentence and learning that Tim was taken directly to jail to prevent him from speaking, against the norm in these types of cases, many of Tim's supporters decided to speak for Tim in the form of a spontaneous protest to proclaim that citizen voices cannot easily be silenced.  Twenty-six were arrested in this peaceful protest and taken to jail.  Two of those arrested were from Telluride; locals Chris Meyers and Skip Edwards.  Local Tellurider's have set up a defense fund to help with Chris's and Skip's fines with the remainder going to help Tim DeChristopher's appeal expenses, said by his pro-bono attorney's to be in excess of $50,000.
 

Who was the first conservationist? As The Guardian points out, we often think about John Muir and Henry David Thoreau, but there's another name of note, U.S. Congressman George Perkins Marsh, the man who can claim to be "the person who first publicised the now largely unchallenged idea that humans can negatively influence the environment that supports them." In other words, one of the first climate activists.

From The Guardian:

After being found guilty on two felony counts, Tim DeChristopher faces up to ten years in federal prison, as well as a $750,000 fine, but his sentencing which was originally set for June 23, 2011 has now been rescheduled for July 26, 2011 at 3pm.

From Peaceful Uprising:

By issuing another last-minute delay, Judge Dee Benson has made it clear that he is desperate to avoid public accountability for the persecution of peaceful climate justice activist  Tim DeChristopher.

At this year's festival we screened Into Eternity which takes an in-depth look at the first-ever permanent burial ground for spent nuclear waste, now being built in Finland, and the effects of that waste.

An article posted Monday on Solve Climate News tackles the same issue, highlighting the lack of options available for dealing with radioactive nuclear waste.

When the Zion Nuclear Power Station in Illinois closed its doors in 1998, plant owner Commonwealth Edison, now part of Exelon, thought it would take more than two decades to clean up the site.

At the time, Zion needed repairs that exceeded the value of the 2,080-megawatt plant, and dismantling it was the better financial option, said Craig Nesbit, vice president of communications at Exelon. But when operations ceased, the flow of money from utility ratepayers also stopped, drying up the source of Zion's decommissioning funds.

Check out Alex Ebert's Let's Win videom filmed at Tim DeChristopher's trial in February:

Let's Win! from Alexander on Vimeo.

Be sure to check out the full album.

Scholastic, Inc., was recently hammered for distributing a coal industry funded fourth-grade curriculum. In response, three advocacy groups have launched a letter writing campaign asking Scholastic, Inc. to stop distributing the materials.

From The New York Times:

Children’s books and other educational materials produced by the publisher Scholastic reach about 90 percent of the nation’s classrooms. With this enormous access to what amounts to a captive audience of children, the company has a special obligation to adhere to high educational standards.

Grist published an excellent article last week, highlighting the importance of art in social movements, noting that "great upheavals demand great art."

And now humanity faces the gravest of threats: climate change. The climate clock ticks ominously onward, but thus far we have been unable to marshal what Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein describe as the "bodies, passion, and creativity" required to avert impending economic and environmental disaster. But passion comes from the heart, not the head, and climate activists have largely been targeting people's upper organ, pleading their case with statistics, policy platforms, and poll-driven messaging. Maybe it's time to aim lower. McKibben, the founder of 350.org, is one of the few climate activists thinking seriously about the relationship between art, activism and social change.

What's your true impact?

Here in Telluride, The New Community Coalition is making sure that local residents really know what their carbon footprint is and what steps they can take to reduce it, with the help of their EcoAction Initiative.

The program is designed to help individuals reduce their carbon footprint by helping them become aware of where they consume carbon, and helping them take action to reduce it. The results are measurable reductions in carbon emissions and an improved quality of life for each participant and the region as a whole.

How does it work?

1. You provide TNCC with the past 12 months of info on where you produce carbon (ie energy bills, type of car they drive and yearly mileage, plane flights, whether you compost/recycle, where you buy your food, etc.).

2. You are assigned a local mentor that goes through this information with you and does a home check-up. The goal is for the mentor to help point out where you can reduce your footprint via:

a) conservation,