Wednesday, August 9, 2017

JFK's Grandaughter is a Reporter for The New York Times, Writing on Climate Change


Tatiana Schlossberg, JFK's granddaughter, is a reporter covering climate change and the environment for the Science section of The New York Times.

Readers of her reports would have learned:
In the Garden of Eden, figuring out what to wear was easy and the fig leaves were environmentally friendly. Today, it’s much harder to find clothes that don’t have some kind of negative impact on the planet.

Textile manufacturers use complicated chemical and industrial processes to make clothing materials, from cotton to synthetic fibers. And while the environmental consequences aren’t always clear, consumption is growing. Americans spent 14 percent more on clothing and footwear in 2016 — around $350 billion total — than they did in 2011, and the trend is similar or greater in much of the rest of the world, according to the market research firm Euromonitor International.

Buying less is the easiest way to make a difference. But when you do need new clothes, you will usually be choosing among four major types of fibers: oil-based synthetics, cotton, rayon and wool. Their environmental trade-offs are so varied that a definitive ranking would be impossible.
And
From the common barn swallow to the exotic giraffe, thousands of animal species are in precipitous decline, a sign that an irreversible era of mass extinction is underway, new research finds...
Dr. Ceballos emphasized that he and his co-authors, Paul R. Ehrlich and Rodolfo Dirzo, both professors at Stanford University, are not alarmists...
Dr. Ehrlich, who rose to prominence in the 1960s after he wrote “The Population Bomb,” a book that predicted the imminent collapse of humanity because of overpopulation, said he saw a similar phenomenon in the animal world as a result of human activity.
   -RW

3 comments:

  1. This is the "skipping through fields" fantasy of history: that prior to industrialization the common man and his family led idyllic agricultural lifestyles, well clothed and fed, healthy, with ruddy cheeks and large waistlines, farming when and if they felt like it, never impacted by the elements or disease, with the kids happily skipping through fields as playtime and entertainment for the parent. Then along came industrialization and ruined all that. Right.

    Only someone who lives the Kennedy lifestyle (OK, I'm presuming Schlossberg does) could bemoan all the advances that have lifted people out of poverty. She can go back to wearing fig leaves if she wishes.

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    1. Great lecture from the amazing Ralph Raico about this that I've listened to a couple of times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdXj6tnvdZA

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  2. I love the declaration that Paul Ehrlich, author of "The Population Bomb" is not an alarmist.

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