Nation Environmental Correspondent Mark Hertsgaard sits down with GRITtv’s Laura Flanders to talk about the environmental movement and the current climate legislation. Flanders is pessimistic that the current bill will actually reduce emissions. Hertsgaard agrees that the loopholes in the bill will make it difficult to actually cap emissions: “Cap and trade could work if you get tough legislation but that is a very big if in the United States of America,” Hertsgaard says.
Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
Video: Tougher Cap and Trade Legislation (GRITtv, 14mins)
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010Hertsgaard: “Fighting drought with trees in Burkina Faso” (audio)
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009Reporter’s notebook, on PRI’s The World, August 17, 2009
“The paved road heading north from Burkina Faso’s capital ends in the hot, dusty town of Ouahigouya. Most locals here are farmers, scratching out a living in the savannah that stretches to the horizon on all sides. I’d come here hoping to get a glimpse of how Africa might feed itself under a hotter, more volatile climate. Africa already has the highest proportion of malnourished people on earth. And scientists say climate change will hit this continent hard. …”
Download the audio file (MP3/2.6MB): http://64.71.145.108/audio/0817094.mp3
Or view the transcript at: http://www.theworld.org/2009/08/17/fighting-drought-with-trees-in-burkina-faso/
Hertsgaard on “Obama’s plan for the environment” (audio)
Sunday, March 1st, 2009Interviewed by Lisa Mullins on PRI’s The World (Feb 26, 2009)
Journalist Mark Hertsgaard writes about the environment for The Nation. So, Mark, when you hear about not only an investment in more efficient energy sources but something also that will put people back to work and make the nation more secure, as the President said, sounds too good to be true. Do you think it is? …
Download the audio file (MP3/2.3MB): http://www.theworld.org/audio/0226092.mp3
Or view the transcript at: http://www.theworld.org/node/24757/
Video: Interviewing Van Jones (LinkTV)
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007Van Jones is one of the most impressive political activists I have met in my entire journalistic career. The work he talks about in this video — linking the fight against climate change with the fight against poverty — is long overdue for the environmental movement and crucial if the movement wants to appeal beyond its traditional white middle class backers.
Here’s how Van described the 1 Sky initiative in my recent article for The Nation:
“1 Sky’s demand for 5 million green collar jobs is crucial to appealing beyond the traditional environmental constituency”, says Van Jones, a veteran African-American activist and 1 Sky supporter whose new group, Green For All, “aims to spread the benefits of the green energy revolution to all parts of society. Now, the implicit assumption is that green means white. When Vanity Fair does its green issues, you don’t see many people who look like me in there. Green For All is demanding a $1 billion commitment from the federal government to lift 250,000 people out of poverty and into the new economy by training them for green collar jobs.”
LinkTV: Exxon-Mobil’s Impact on Climate Change
Friday, September 28th, 2007Coming Sunday (Sept. 30) I’ll be presenting a striking documentary on the role of ExxonMobil in promoting denial of climate change.
Here’s the press release from LinkTV:
Merkel is greener than some Americans think
Monday, September 17th, 2007A recent NYTimes piece idiotically likened Chancellor Merkel’s environmental outlook–which the reporter took to be a new, politically motivated tactic–to the US equivalent of “Ronald Reagan transforming himself into Al Gore.”
This, despite the fact that Merkel was Germany’s lead negotiator on the Kyoto Protocol in the 1990s and very committed to the issue, according to Tim Wirth, the US negotiator.
Adding to the foolishness of the NYT piece, the reporter later in the article even mentioned that Merkel had held this post but still insisted that her current green gestures are more spin than substance.
You know what they say about journalists who get a notion in their heads: Never let the facts get in the way of a good story!
Amerika wird Grün
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007The German-language St. Galler Tagblatt (Switzerland) has published my article Amerika wird Grün (“America Goes Green”). Included with the article is a brief interview with me.
The article can be read at the St. Galler Tagblatt website.
[Thanks to Thomas Spang for the interview and the link.]
NYT: As China Roars …
Sunday, August 26th, 2007The article As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes (NY Times; Aug 26, 2007) makes for important, if discouraging, reading–all the more so because the same basic facts and trajectory have been clear for over a decade now.
I should know.
I wrote what, I think, was the first extensive report on China’s environmental crisis by an independent western reporter back in 1997–first, in an article for The Atlantic Monthly and, in more length and detail in my 1998 book, Earth Odyssey: Around the World In Search of Our Environmental Future.
The NYT story reported almost nothing that I did not say in that article, “Our Real China Problem,” ten years ago; in fact, I predicted that China’s environmental actions would soon command the world’s attention as much as its economic prowess already was.
Here’s a link to that original article: http://www.markhertsgaard.com/articles/108
[Thanks to Michael Dietrick bringing the NYT article to my attention.]