April 22 Action environment India Indian music music
by Warren
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Tara Bangalore’s Set, 04/22/2011
Here is the complete set by Carnatic violin virtuoso Tara Bangalore at the “World Violins Against Climate Change” concert in Boston on April 22. Her artistry is prodigious, and her rapport with her disciple Rasika Murali is absolutely delightful.
Personnel:
Tara Bangalore and Rasika Murali – violins;
Pravin Sitaram – mridangam;
Tarun Bangalore – kanjira and mridangam.
Listen and enjoy — and if you do, please consider donating to 350.org through this link.
Composition: “Abishta varada”
Ragam: Hamsadhwani
Adi talam- 8 beats
Composer: Tyagaraja
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“Sobhillu”
Ragam: Jaganmohini
Rupakam — 6 beats
Composed by Tyagaraja
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“Aparadhamula”
Ragam: Latangi
Adi talam
Composed by Patnam Subramania Iyer
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Thani Avartanam (Percussion Solo)
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“Tom Dru Dru Dim”
Ragam: Misra Shivaranjani
Double beat – 16 beats Adi talam
Composed by: Maharajapuram Santhanam.
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environment: community community involvement heroes responsibility
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 5, Day 3: Niiiiiice.
The Christian Science Monitor does an Earth Day report on a woman named Erin Barnes, and her group, which is named IOBY (“In Our Back Yards”). Good for her:
Dowser: What is unique about ioby’s mission as an environmental organization?
Erin Barnes, co-founder and executive director: It’s part of the values that we have as an organization to work locally and be invested in the community. Ioby, the name, comes from the opposite of “nimby” (Not In My Backyard).
We started the organization because we felt like the environmental movement had long been concentrated on places where people don’t live. We felt that the interaction between people or communities and the environment was meaningful.
Every project we support through our site has to meet our environmental criteria. They have to be doing something that benefits the community too.
It’s nice to see somebody doing the right thing for once.
Sent April 25:
Ms. Barnes’ group has the right name. The effects of global warming cannot be relegated to other places; we are all in this together. Since climate change manifests locally, regionally, nationally and globally, we need to tackle the problem in the same way. Personal efforts must combine with the work of neighborhood groups; statewide initiatives and a national movement for environmental responsibility need to go hand in hand. Furthermore, it’s not enough for our response to this imminent catastrophe to be polycentric; just as the greenhouse effect is going to continue to influence Earth’s climate for centuries to come, our thinking must be polytemporal, extending beyond the narrow short-term. It is time for human civilization to begin imagining the distant future — and to recognize that “business as usual” is going to render that future a dystopian hell in short order.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Christine Todd Whitman EPA Republicans
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 5, Day 2: Soon They’ll Be Rarer Than Polar Bears
The Tampa Bay Times reports on recent remarks by former Bush Administration EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman, who appears to be marginally aware that we’re, you know, kind of in trouble here:
In these tough economic times, it’s no surprise political leaders spend a lot less time talking about combating global warming than about the need to create jobs. But former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman says people should realize the implications of doing nothing.
“A decision you can make is let’s do nothing, it’s too costly (to develop nuclear or solar). But understand you’re going to pay a price down the road,” Whitman said in a Political Connections interview airing today on Bay News 9 at 11 a.m. and 8 p.m.
Whitman, a former governor of New Jersey, is a director of a bipartisan national security think tank called the American Security Project. Last week it released a study estimating that inaction on climate change by 2025 will cost Florida $27 billion, because of hurricane damage, real estate and tourism losses, and electricity consumption.
Moderate Republicans have their own particular weird types of delusion: to wit, that they matter to their own party any more.
Sent April 23 (making up for a couple of days of inaction while coordinating the Violins concert):
Former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman’s words on global climate change are welcome. For Republican politicians, acknowledging the existence of global warming is a form of electoral suicide, but since Whitman is firmly ensconced in the private sector, she presumably feels free to speak without taking inconvenient political truths into account. But the fact is that the so-called “moderate” wing of the Republican Party, where Ms. Whitman pitches her ideological tent, is all but extinct. What’s left is a group of zealots who are fervently pushing an anti-science agenda with catastrophic implications. Like the Bush Administration official who mocked members of the so-called “reality-based community,” today’s Republicans appear to believe that the laws of nature can be neutralized at will, preferably by tax cuts for the wealthy. Ms. Whitman is better able to recognize the reality of global climate change than the sociopathic wreckage of a once-responsible political party.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility denialism false equivalence media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 5, Day 1: Teedledee Dee….
Reports the Duluth News Tribune, a local and well-regarded TV talking head has seen the light. Don Shelby figured out that climate change isn’t an ordinary news story. Speaking at a two-day sustainability fair at the University of Minnesota, he came clean about having promoted false equivalency and stenographic journalism on the subject for years.
Actually, he was pretty forthright. I can’t wait to read the comments.
The TV newsman’s mea culpa about having misreported climate change came after of years of treating the story the same as he would any other, requiring the views of two opposing parties, Shelby told the packed lecture hall of the chemistry building.
But, he said, climate change is not a pro or con issue; it’s a scientific fact. And journalists who work to “balance” a story present an inaccurate picture when they give equal weight to sources promulgating inaccurate facts.
“If I report a story on abuse of children, I don’t go out and interview an abuser on the up-side of child abuse,” he said as an example of how an effort to balance can go too far.
Sent April 23, and published a few days ago:
While it’s terrific news that a respected media personality has recognized the grave consequences of “false equivalence” in the media’s handling of climate change, there still are hundreds of journalists who haven’t come to their senses yet. Some of these reporters are overly credulous; some are overworked or lazy; the worst, however, have chosen to ignore the magnitude of the problem for the most venal of reasons. As Upton Sinclair put it, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Rather than giving up a fraction of their mind-boggling profitability to help humanity make the transition to renewable energy sources, the fossil fuel industries find it cheaper to fund denialism in the media, obscuring the facts and fostering a political climate that supports the (highly remunerative) status quo. We need more Don Shelbys, and we need them soon.
Warren Senders