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While the Gulf oil slick worsens, still spilling from a capsized wellhead and pressing ever closer to coastline towns, the blame game has exploded across the public sphere. Craig Collins, author of Toxic Loopholes: Failures and Future Prospects for Environmental Law, weighs in on the politicking to offer his vision of why this crisis demands a reconsideration of America’s heavy reliance on petroleum – economically, environmentally, and morally.
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New York, NY: If you're free this coming Sunday, May 2nd, Editors Cyrus Patell and Bryan Waterman are celebrating the publication of The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of New York at the Bowery Poetry Club and Café - starting at 8pm. Local contributors will be reading from their chapters and contemplating the idea of New York literature, past, present, and future. Featuring: Betsy Bradley (previously featured on TSotP here) on Knickerbocker NY from Irving to Wharton, Caleb Crain on highlife/lowlife in the 19th century and Daniel Kane on 1970s poetry and punk rock in the East Village. Bar on hand and books for sale! You can find out more about the event here. And while we're on the subject, meet two of the aforementioned contributors: Caleb Crain, author of "The Early Literature of New York’s Moneyed Class" and esteemed blogger at Steamboats Are Ruining Everything and Daniel Kane (author of "From Poetry to Punk in the East Village").
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Last week, Bolivian President Evo Morales hosted a four-day summit on climate change - the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. Attracting more than 35,000 delegates from social movements and organizations from 140 countries, this alternative summit gathered indigenous groups, scientists, activists and delegations from lower income countries - a sharp contrast from the diplomatic representatives of December's Copenhagen Accord. Craig Collins, author of Toxic Loopholes: Failures and Future Prospects for Environmental Law, weighs in on the mission, message, and political expediency of the Bolivian Accord. ----- The message delivered by the poor nations and climate activists gathered in Bolivia this week is undeniably just: The world desperately needs an effective climate agreement. Rich countries are primarily responsible for causing this problem and have reaped most of benefits of two centuries of fossil-fueled industrialization. Therefore, they must bear most of the costs of responding to climate change and overcoming the world’s addiction to fossil fuels. Only the callous or ethically challenged would dispute this position on moral grounds. But even though the South’s case for climate justice is ethically sound, it may be politically doomed. Power, not morality, is the currency of international politics. In the corridors of power, the moral high ground is nearly worthless without real leverage to back it up. And, when it comes to climate change, the South has very little leverage to wrest justice from the North.
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In Ravenna in Late Antiquity, Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis looks at one of the most important cities of late antique Europe over the course of 350 years – tracing its expansion as well as its artistic growth. Many remarkable works of art and architecture from this late ancient world still survive today. With this weekend's Wall Street Journal, scholar Stuart Ferguson puts the unique legacy of Ravenna in context – and calls Ravenna in Late Antiquity "fascinating and dense" - "both a narrative history of the city's ruling elites and a survey of its architectural and artistic treasures. . . . [treasures] worth pausing over."
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Today marks the 40th anniversary of Earth Day – the birth of the modern environmental movement – and a great moment to reflect on how far we’ve come since 1970. In a year that witnessed the failed Copenhagen climate conference and steadily escalating conflicts between climate change skeptics and fervent environmental activists, it remains difficult to sort out answers amid the clamor. In USA TODAY, Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and editor of the forthcoming Smart Solutions to Climate Change (September 2010), gives his rather optimistic perspective: "Earth Day: Smile, don't shudder..." -------- Given all the talk of impending catastrophe, this may come as a surprise, but as we approach the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day, people who care about the environment actually have a lot to celebrate. Of course, that's not how the organizers of Earth Day 2010 see it. In their view (to quote a recent online call to arms), "The world is in greater peril than ever." But consider this: In virtually every developed country, the air is more breathable and the water is more drinkable than it was in 1970. In most of the First World, deforestation has turned to reforestation. Moreover, the percentage of malnutrition has been reduced, and ever-more people have access to clean water and sanitation. Apocalyptic predictions from concerned environmental activists are nothing new. Until about 10 years ago, I took it for granted that these predictions were sound. Like many of us, I believed that the world was in a terrible state that was only getting worse with each passing day. My thinking changed only when, as a university lecturer, I set out with my students to disprove what I regarded at the time as the far-fetched notion that global environmental conditions were actually improving.
Read MoreSome say climate change is a farce. Some say the sky is falling. Now, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist tells the real story… Listen here to Dr. Burton Richter talk about Beyond Smoke and Mirrors on The Jim Bohannon Show and check out the book’s website for a video interview that goes beyond smoke and mirrors […]
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Congratulations to Prof. Ellen Bialystok and Dr. James Tully, winners of the $100,000 2010 Killam Prize – Canada’s most distinguished annual award for outstanding career achievements in health sciences, engineering, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. Bialystok and Tully are two of five prominent Canadian researchers recognized for career achievements in advancing understanding in their […]
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Cristina Mazzoni, author of the very cool, very new, She-Wolf: The Story of a Roman Icon, bids happy birthday to Rome – and explains how the she-wolf became a potent symbol over the course of the past 2,763 years. -------- On April 21, Rome’s birthday is celebrated; this year, it is the city’s 2763rd. Tradition tells that, on this day in 753 bce, twin brothers Romulus and Remus—descendants of the Trojan refugee Aeneas—decided to found their own city. When Romulus built his walls on the Palatine Hill, Remus mocked and jumped over them; Romulus, provoked, killed him and remained Rome’s sole founder. It is from him that the Eternal City takes its name, as we all know. (But do we? According to another legend, it was a Trojan woman, Rhome, who named the city: with the help of her women friends, she forced the refugees she traveled with—including her own husband—to settle at the bend of the Tiber River by burning their ships.)
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