climate change – Don't Gel Too Soon

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Cancer, Courage and Rage

Cancer has taken so many people I’ve loved and admired. This new interview with two hugely admired and much-loved celebrities reminded me of how deeply it affects us all . We know, in our heads, that the presence of beauty, courage, fame and an amazing marriage and family can’t keep the monster at bay. Neither can being the most respected broadcast journalist of the past 30 years; Tom Brokaw had cancer too. So did my husband, by the way. Thankfully, they are still with us. But it’s a roll of the dice, not fame or fortune, or even education, that’s made it so.

So why are we not all enraged? Why do we refuse to keep this plague at (or at least near) the top of our agenda? We face so much right now: attacks on women, racial tension, income inequality, climate change, declining education systems and infrastructure – fill in your own particular blank. But no matter how we feel about any of these issues, we all grieve for those we’ve lost to cancer; we all long for their presence in our lives and know that it is just a lack of knowledge that took them from us.

No family is untouched; the lucky ones face it among older members but so many lose loved ones — family and friends, well before they’ve seen their children grow up, or get married or find their way in the world and before they’ve exhausted the gifts that brought so much to all of us. I’ve been thinking about them a great deal recently, and have felt, for some time, a need to honor them once again here. Many died before there was an Internet but I’ve added links where I could.

We were young journalists together:

Margot Adler

Mary Halleron

Mark Harrington

Joan Shorenstein

Teachers, mentors, friends:

Maggie Morton

The Dearest:

The War on Science? Anti-Vaxxers Trump the Right

We’ve all been ranting about “The Republican War on Science: anti-climate change, anti-evolution, anti-God-knows-what-else: all those conservatives refusing to see what’s in front of them.

Well, my friend Erin Kotecki Vest, whose immune system is seriously compromised, posted on Facebook yesterday from a pharmacy where she’d gone to pick up a prescription. Next to her was a man who had brought with him his son, who has whooping cough! That’s kind of the equivalent of waving a gun at her.

Whooping cough (Pertussis) can usually be prevented through a DPT injection; although this kid’s vaccination status is unclear, the more people who refuse to vaccinate their kids, the less safe the rest of us are. This is not an observation, it’s an epidemiological fact.

Meanwhile, measles is haunting California, from Disneyland to affluent Marin County and other Northern California communities*. And the folks fighting the science? We have met the enemy and they are us: Whole Food progressives who refuse to accept hard evidence that the “vaccines cause autism” research was a fraud.

Imagine how scary this is for those of us in California (which always leads the way for the rest of the country by the way, so don’t write this off as California crazy.) I have three grandsons under four; two of them are under 6 months old. They can’t have MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) immunizations under 12 months. So here we are: Daycare at the gym? Children’s concerts? Family restaurant dinners? Story time at the library? Would you go?

What I want to know is, if it’s wrong to deny the theory of man-made climate change and wrong to deny the theory of evolution – both of which have been repeatedly found to be true by researchers, why is OK to risk the lives of entire communities of kids when the decades of research have proven these vaccines to be safe and reliable? What’s the difference? And which side’s “war on science” is doing the most damage to us and our families — and threatening our children and grandchildren — right now, today?

*The chart above is from the Council on Foreign Relations via the LATimes.

Do We Americans Still Have It? Do We Care? #MicroblogMonday

I’ve spent most of my life thinking about disasters and potential apocalypses and injustice and misery: I’m a journalist, or at least I was, so I don’t get discouraged easily. So far the world, or at least our country, has always seemed to right itself in the nick of time. I seriously wonder if we can still do it though. We all know why:

A bitterly divided country

Racism

Institutional injustice

The terrifying assault on women’s rights and well-being, here and elsewhere

The decline of our public schools

Climate change

The rise of fundamentalism

The coarsening of our culture

The cost of a college education

Ebola

ISIS

Hunger

Anti-Vaxx-ers (seriously)

Add your own here____________________

Beneath those individual issues lies the biggest threat: what appears to be the larger change in our values. As I watched The Roosevelts and, strangely enough, re-watched The King’s Speech, I wondered (not for the first time) where those sorts of world leaders (FDR, a president with political skills, toughness, vision and an understanding both of where the country was and where he needed to take it, Teddy Roosevelt who took on income inequality through trust busting and began what became the environmental movement (and yes he also started a couple of wars… or a reluctant King George IV, who not only held Britain together and committed under horrible circumstances but also led by example) are today, whether they could be elected or heeded — whether they would even be willing to try. Even more, I wondered if our country would accept them; whether we are still capable of selflessness or a sense of duty or a thoughtful response to a call to sacrifice. I hope so.

BLOGHER COMES OF AGE WITH ITS OWN INTERVIEW WITH BARACK OBAMA

As you know, I am a very loyal supporter of BlogHer and a great admirer of its three founders, who have built a community of respect and honesty, humor and warmth that is a treasure to many of my sister bloggers and to me. At last year’s BlogHer conference much was made of the absence of presidential candidates, even though they’d all been invited AND even though we were in Chicago, where Yearly Kos (now called Netroots Nation) was happening in literally one or two days, and all the Democrats came there. It was if the "little ladies" were just not worth the trouble.

So it’s very exciting to see Barack Obama sit down with BlogHer’s Erin Kotecki Vest and answer questions submitted by the BlogHer community. No headlines, but a broad survey of topics with sound, thoughtful and well-expressed responses. This is a landmark moment and I’m so proud to be a BlogHer and a small part of its universe. Watch it for yourself.

THE STORY OF STUFF: DOES IT WORK?

This film was screened in Berkeley in early December so I’m a little late (a lot late?) writing about it but it’s worth a conversation any time. The Story of Stuff *is an extremely effective exposition on the consequences of overconsumption – and the origins of the habits that led us to our current environmental crisis. It’s riveting. And most of it makes horrifying sense; it’s the accumulation of so many common sense facts that has the power.

Somehow though, I wish for a bit more. Much of the rhetoric, while the facts may be real, is intense. I keep thinking that if the data were relayed in a way that gave us a second to breathe and absorb the most impressive**, and if the relationship between government and business were described a bit less simplistically (as almost a conspiracy,) the effect would be greater. The problem is that all those businesses are where people work. The first thing many will hear when we talk about villainous companies is the threat to their livelihood. That doesn’t make the facts less true; it just means that we have to talk about the issue in ways that address these fears. Otherwise, the film provides a great vehicle for the converted but not much firepower to reach those who may buy into the issue generally but not into the condemnation of what keeps their family alive.

I’m only dwelling on this because the film is such a great tool – and its flaws will reduce its impact. Those passionate about the environment, especially now, when people seem so much more ready to listen, want to get everything into the conversation. But I’m afraid, in this very good job, they’ve included elements that will prevent those least engaged from joining the battle. Take a look – what do you think? Here’s the introductory chapter. You can see the rest here or on You Tube in chapter elements.

*Funded by the Tides Foundation

** For example, these:
*In the past three decades, one-third of the planet’s natural resource base have been consumed. *In the United States, we have less than 4% of our original forests left.
*The U.S.has 5% of the world’s population but consumes 30% of the world’s resources4 and creates 30% of the world’s waste.
*The average US person now consumes twice as much as they did 50 years ago.
*In the US, we spend 3-4 times as many hours shopping as our counterparts in Europe do.
*Each person in the US makes 4.5 pounds of garbage a day – twice what we each made 30 years ago.