by Downtowner, posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2012 at 6:00 am
The title’s all in caps for a reason – you’ll just have to bear with me to find that reason out. It’s complicated.
My daughter tells this story of moving to North Carolina, inviting friends over for dinner, accepting an offer to help “peel” the corn, watching leaves being literally peeled back one by one, before picking up an ear and rapidly shucking it only to be met with gasps of astonishment and amazed “how did you DO that?” questions.
My son tells this story of being involved in a day-long firefight in Afghanistan in a cornfield and the dissonance caused in his mind by having terrorists fire at him from the cover of high corn that evoked for him happy childhood memories of travelling through miles and miles of cornfields to visit his grandparents on the other side of Illinois.
At the base of both of these stories is a sort of heritage you end up with if you grow up in the cornbelt, even if nobody in your family farms; it’s ever-present enough that you acquire corn stories. And these two definitely grew up in the cornbelt – the only place that can possibly be cornier than their home state of Illinois is Iowa, where I’m headed next if you continue reading.
Former managing director at JP Morgan John Fullerton wants to see a complete re-imagining of the world of investments. If we don’t, Fullerton argues in this conversation with Laura Flanders, our grandchildren will ask us, “What were you thinking?”
With extreme weather fueling wildfires in Colorado and record rainfall in Florida, the Obama administration has moved closer to approving construction of the southern section of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. We’re joined by environmentalist, educator and author Bill McKibben, founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org. “Today is one of those days when you understand what the early parts of the global warming era are going to look like,” McKibben says. “For the first time in history, we managed to get the fourth tropical storm of the year before July … These are the most destructive fires in Colorado history and they come after the warmest weather ever recorded there … This is what it looks like as the planet begins to warm. Nothing that happened [at the United Nations Rio+20 summit] will even begin to slow down that trajectory.”
Center for American Progress Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy Daniel J. Weiss explains why the Carbon Pollution Rule is important for the environment.
On 350.org’s Climate Action Day, a group of a friends climbed the melting Dana Glacier outside Yosemite National Park, California to connect the dots between local weather and global climate weirding.
Credits
Director – David Gilbert
Editor – Stefen Ruenzel
Music – “Demain je change de vie” by Lohstana David
On 5/5/12, people around the world volunteered, documented, educated, and protested to connect the dots on climate change. We’re just getting started — join us at http://www.350.org
“Over the past five years, grassroots leaders throughout the country (and the world) have led the charge for a clean energy economy with 350.org. We’ve organized more than 15,000 actions together, helped stop a tar sands pipeline, and generated momentum to solve the climate crisis. Join us http://350.org“
“In this video from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, ecologist David Holmgren traces the path of permaculture from its roots in the 1970s to its potential, in the future, to reshape how humans interact with the planet. He explains how its premise—working with nature rather than against it—will help us adapt to and survive in a resource-scarce world.”
