Idea Man

One thing that makes me really happy about the Obama presidency (and is at once a sad commentary on the Bush administration) is that people with ideas – scientists, academics, writers, and everyday folk – feel comfortable approaching the administration to share them. Only time will tell whether the administration will be receptive to those ideas, or if action will be hampered by an uncooperative Congress. But at least for now, there’s a buzz in the air.
One place this is going on is at the DotEarth blog on the New York Times, run by journalist Andrew Revkin. You can review “Readers to Obama: 10 Earthly Ideas on a Budget”:http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/readers-to-obama-10-earthly-ideas-on-a-budget/, and submit your own ideas for action on climate change in response to this post “Obama Urgent on Warming, Public Cool”:http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/obamas-urgency-on-warming-meets-cool-public/. Disturbingly, recent polls have shown that public concern about global warming has dropped considerably in relation to economic, security, and social concerns. (I still can’t see why it’s hard to understand that climate has an effect on ALL these issues.)
Also of interest at DotEarth, “this retrospective on the late Arne Naess”:http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/is-your-ecology-deep-or-shallow/, the philosopher and mountaineer who divided ecological thinking and action into deep and shallow.