In the midst of the George W. Bush Administration, science writer Chris Mooney’s The Republican War on Science (Basic Books, 2005) noted an increasing trend: the rejection of science by a growing number of Republican Party members, not just on evolution, but on topics as varied as stem cell research, the hole in the ozone [...]
In the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama won a sound victory over Republican contender John McCain, bolstered by a new generation of activists that helped deliver small donations and voters. Obama’s message was simple but effective: hope. Many did hope that Obama would help bring the U.S. out of the endless wars, economic decline, and [...]
“Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences” and ”How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities” suggest that the 2008 economic crash was not just due to neoliberal policies that did away with oversight and regulation of the financial sector, but fundamental problems with neo-classical economics itself. By Christine Shearer Steve Keen’s “Debunking Economics: [...]
While many economists have argued that no one could have foreseen the 2008 financial crash, some economists were sounding the alarm well before the bubble burst. One of them was Steve Keen, a Professor of Economics & Finance at the University of Western Sydney, and author of the book “Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor [...]
Rob Nixon’s “Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor” (Harvard University Press 2011) explores the slow, steady, and often ignored violence of socio-environmental degradation around the globe, and the writer-activists trying to bring it to light. By Christine Shearer In “Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor” (Harvard University Press 2011), Rachel Carson Professor [...]
Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway uncover the history of a small group of Cold War scientists and advisers who battled anything, including scientific research, that might threaten their vision of American free enterprise in Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (Bloomsbury Press, [...]
Kari Marie Norgaard helps us understand how and why societies fail to act on climate change in Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life (MIT Press, 2011) By Christine Shearer Don’t be fooled by the title of Kari Marie Norgaard’s Living in Denial – this is not a book about people who reject the [...]
The Scientific is Political and Personal: NASA Scientist James Hansen Reaches Out in Storms of My Grandchildren In June 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the U.S. Senate that global warming was underway and humans were a factor. As Hansen recounts in Storms of my Grandchildren, he thought U.S. politicians would do the logical [...]
Jeremy Leggett has undergone quite a few large career changes, from oil industry consultant to Greenpeace scientist to solar entrepreneur. A geologist by training, he worked with the oil industry until his studies brought him face-to-face with the growing evidence of global warming. Within an industry refusing to change, Leggett moved to Greenpeace and was [...]
While many may think about oil when it comes to climate change, the real struggle could be coal. Coal is used for half the nation’s electricity, which is the U.S.’s largest source of carbon dioxide emissions. Scientists warn that the continued use of so much coal could put us on the path to runaway warming, [...]
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