Articles by Kit Stolz

‘Church’, from Songs of Shiloh, shows some love for the planet

Often our culture equates caring about the planet with envisioning what could go wrong. (Think of dire visions of societal breakdown, disaster, and ruin -- Cormac McCarthy's The Road, for example.)

The Road is a powerful novel, but one can express love for our planet and our land in ways other than fear of a horrific outcome. (Imagine if the only way we could appreciate a loved one was to imagine his or her annihilation.) Music especially has this ability to express love, and perhaps the best "environmental" song I heard this year comes from a unique record called Songs of Shiloh.

Reportedly found in a cassette demo tape on the floor of a small recording studio in northern California, these songs from an unknown singer named Shiloh inspired songwriter Marty Axelrod and singer Nicole Gordon to gorgeous results. Especially memorable to those who sometimes go walking in the woods will be "Church," which matches soaring vocals to the gentlest sort of love for what we call nature -- or something else.

Take a look at the lyrics below the fold -- or better yet, listen to the song (mp3 file).

James Hansen talks about what to do now that we’ve passed the ‘tipping point’

For the last few years, James Hansen, the man who first warned Congress of global warming in testimony last century, and the man considered NASA's "top scientist" on climate questions, has been giving talks around the country asking can we avoid dangerous climate change (PDF)?

But Hansen has changed his tune: no longer does he ask if we have passed the tipping points of climate change. In a press conference Thursday morning at the American Geophysical Union, he stated that we have passed several tipping points. He said scientists now know that soon the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer, that huge ice sheets will melt, and the climactic zones will shift towards the poles of the earth, among other consequences.

A review of The Host

What is an environmental movie? Is it a movie that uses the beauty of wilderness to make us fall in love with the earth, as for example Into the Wild, or Brokeback Mountain? Is it a movie that explicitly tackles an environmental issue, such as Erin Brockovich, or The China Syndrome?

Or is it a picture that exploits the power of raw film to open up an environmental theme -- such as the risk of radiation -- with sheer imagination, such as (the original) Godzilla?

It's a rhetorical question, but one with an inescapable answer: all of the above count as environmental movies, each in its own way, some better than others. And if this is true, as it surely is, than the best environmental movie of the year may turn out to be an unlikely candidate: the mesmerizing -- and funny -- Korean movie released internationally this year, The Host.

Though essentially a cheesy horror movie, it's phenomenally well-directed, and to date has been the best-reviewed foreign film of the year.

On who is accountable for Chinese greenhouse-gas emissions

Yesterday a D.C. nonprofit, the Center for Global Development, released an inventory of the world's power plants. Its nifty database shows that on a national level, China trails only the the U.S. in total emissions of greenhouse gases, and not by much.

This will disappoint the global warming proponents at the National Review, who have been predicting for months that China will surpass the traditional emissions champ -- the United States -- this year.

But both the scoffers on the right and the worriers on the left may be overlooking a central question, which was broached this Monday in a news story from The Wall Street Journal.

Simply put: a high percentage of Chinese emissions are produced in factories making products for buyers around the world. Shouldn't that be considered in the emissions accounting?

The vast majority of the world's MP3 players are made in China, where the main power source is coal. Manufacturing a single MP3 player releases about 17 pounds of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. iPods, along with thousands of other goods churned out by Chinese factories, from toys to rolled steel, pose a question that is becoming an issue in the climate-change debate. If a gadget is made in China by an American company and exported and used by consumers from Stockholm to São Paulo, Brazil, should the Chinese government be held responsible for the carbon released in manufacturing it?

The story hints at the complexity of fault-finding when it comes to emissions, which we as a nation and as a species have barely begun to unpack. Not only must we contend with the fact that carbon dioxide is indivisible -- and equally warming no matter if it's emitted in a Communist nation such as China, a capitalist nation such as the U.S., or a third-world nation such as India -- but there is also what The Stern Review calls the "intergenerational" aspect of emissions. Carbon released today may have catastrophic effects thirty years from now, when the original emitters are long dead. Who will the children of today blame then?

But to continue with Jane Spencer's thoughtful, probing story: