environment

Sunday Funday: John Oliver & Bill Nye on Climate Change Debate

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Last weekend, on John Oliver’s new HBO show, Last Week Tonight, the former Daily Show correspondent hosted a “mathematically representative climate change debate” with Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Here is a description of the segment from the Huffington Post:

Twenty-five percent of Americans don’t believe in climate change, according to a recent poll, but in the words of John Oliver, “who gives a sh-t?”

A new government report issued last week warned that climate change is already here. The host stressed on Sunday night that regardless of the remaining skeptics out there, climate change is just not up for debate anymore.

“You don’t need people’s opinion on a fact,” Oliver said. “You might as well have a poll asking: ‘Which number is bigger, 15 or 5?’ or ‘Do owls exist?’ or ‘Are there hats?'”

“The debate on climate change ought not to be whether or not it exists,” he added. “It’s what we should do about. There is a mountain of research on this topic.”

Oliver then brought on Bill Nye the Science Guy to show what climate change debates on television should actually look like.

Sunday Funday: John Oliver & Bill Nye on Climate Change Debate

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Last weekend, on John Oliver’s new HBO show, Last Week Tonight, the former Daily Show correspondent hosted a “mathematically representative climate change debate” with Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Here is a description of the segment from the Huffington Post:

Twenty-five percent of Americans don’t believe in climate change, according to a recent poll, but in the words of John Oliver, “who gives a sh-t?”

A new government report issued last week warned that climate change is already here. The host stressed on Sunday night that regardless of the remaining skeptics out there, climate change is just not up for debate anymore.

“You don’t need people’s opinion on a fact,” Oliver said. “You might as well have a poll asking: ‘Which number is bigger, 15 or 5?’ or ‘Do owls exist?’ or ‘Are there hats?'”

“The debate on climate change ought not to be whether or not it exists,” he added. “It’s what we should do about. There is a mountain of research on this topic.”

Oliver then brought on Bill Nye the Science Guy to show what climate change debates on television should actually look like.

“No Fracking Way: The Natural Gas Boom Is Doing More Harm Than Good”

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

That was the proposition being debated on the Intelligence Squared podcast.

Moderated by ABC News’ John Donvan, the debate featured Deborah Goldberg (Managing Attorney at Earthjustice) and Katherine Hudson (Watershed Program Director at Riverkeeper) who argued for the motion; and Joe Nocera (The New York Times) and Sue Tierney (Analysis Group; Former Assistant Secretary for Policy at U.S. Department of Energy), who argued against the motion.

Here is description of the debate:

Natural gas, touted for its environmental, economic, and national security benefits, is often thought of as the fuel that will “bridge” our transition from oil and coal to renewables. The ability to extract natural gas from shale formations through a method called hydraulic fracturing has unleashed vast, untapped sources—by some estimates, the U.S. now sits on a 100-year supply. But contamination from toxic chemicals used in the fracking process has been the source of increasing health and environmental concerns. Can natural gas be part of a clean energy solution, or is it a dangerous roadblock to a fossil-free future?

For more on fracking, check out Saturday’s post liking to a This American Life story about natural gas in Pennsylvania.

PA Natural Gas and the Fracking Debate

/ Matthew Clemente / 3 Comments

PA Natural Gas and the Fracking Debate

I was reminded recently of an episode of This American Life about Pennsylvania natural gas, the hydrofracturing debate, and two PA professors’ predictions abut natural gas.  

Here is a description of the episode: 

A professor in Pennsylvania makes a calculation, to discover that his state is sitting atop a massive reserve of natural gas—enough to revolutionize how America gets its energy. But another professor in Pennsylvania does a different calculation and reaches a troubling conclusion: that getting natural gas out of the ground poses a risk to public health. Two men, two calculations, and two very different consequences. (Transcript)

Sustainability: Higher Education’s Responsibility

/ Danielle Kloster / Leave a comment

This past weekend I attended a conference on campus sustainability at Pace University put on by the Environmental Consortium of Colleges and Universities. The conference was titled “Sustain What? Preparing Our Students by Greening Our Campuses” and while there was a huge amount of information on sustainability projects at various campuses, the underlying theme of the weekend was the importance of higher education in the sustainability movement.
On one level, campuses are uniquely positioned in their communities to serve as role models of sustainability. Thanks to large endowments and government and privately funded grants, they are often able to invest in renewable energy projects, sustainable construction of new buildings, sustainable food systems including composting projects, and other efficiency projects that the general population is often unaware of or unable to afford. Colleges and universities can implement relatively new technologies, educating the community and providing business to new companies.
However, higher education has a greater responsibility within the movement towards sustainability than simply incorporating efficiency into new building design and urging people to turn out the lights. The language of sustainability, argued some at the conference, should be incorporated into all classes offered by a university. I attended a break-out session directed towards faculty that led to a discussion of this issue. Coming from SUNY ESF, where all (or almost all) of our courses and programs are directed towards the environment and sustainability, it was interesting to see the perspective of faculty from other campuses, including predominantly conservative campuses.
The faculty members in the session discussed the lack of basic knowledge that their students had about the environment, including the connection between food production and climate change, and the history of environmental disasters including Love Canal and Bhopal. They also discussed the existence of environmental science/studies programs at their campuses, but the isolation of these programs from the rest of the schools. We came to a few conclusions about the role of higher education in our session (and the conference as a whole):
– Incorporation of sustainability concepts into classes other than those in environmental science/studies programs is not only possible, but necessary to making students more well-rounded as they enter a world facing ecological crises.
– If students learn about sustainability within their field of study, they are likely to take those concepts into their future jobs. Ideally, this would mean the next generation of bankers, businessmen and women, scientists of all stripes, educators, and so on will view the world through the lens of the need for sustainability.
– And most importantly, if higher education is not involved in sustainability, it is not performing its role as higher education.