Maywa Montenegro’s Posts

• Geopolitics of food

  The great wealthy nation land-grab 3

  Posted 6 months, 1 week ago

  Globally, farmland -- and just as critically, water on that land -- is disappearing at an alarming rate. Approximately 50 million acres vanish each year to urbanization, population growth, and economic and industrial development. So what are countries doing in response?

• Metro drain

  How urban life hurts your brain ... and what you can do about it 1

  Posted 10 months ago

  A fascinating little article in Sunday's Boston Globe Ideas section highlights some recent scientific studies on the psychological effects of city life:

  Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control ...
  
  "The mind is a limited machine," says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. "And… Read More

• Climate Central

  Scientists and journalists team up to get the climate story straight 1

  Posted 10 months, 1 week ago

  What do Weather Channel seductress Heidi Cullen, Steven "wedge" Pacala, former TIME writer Michael Lemonick, soon-to-be NOAA head Jane Lubchenco, and Grist founding board member Ben Strauss have in common?

  They're all part of an new project called Climate Central. It was mentioned briefly in this recent post about Lubchenco, but it's so interesting and innovative that it merits further digital ink -- which I was going to provide myself, but Curtis Brainard of the Columbia Journalism Review beat me to it.

  Climate Central is a hybrid team of nearly two dozen journalists and… Read More

• In defense of difference

  How to fend off biological and cultural extinctions 0

  Posted 1 year ago

  The relationship between our planet's vanishing species, languages, and cultures has long fascinated me, so I was thrilled to write a story on the subject for the current issue of Seed.

  In the piece, my co-author Terry Glavin and I mention some important legislation being put forth at the annual meeting of the IUCN in Barcelona, Spain. Now that I look at my calendar, I realize the meeting's just now wrapping up ... and it looks like there is some amazing web coverage of the 10-day event.

  I haven't yet figured out whether the resolution was adopted or… Read More

• Science debate 2008

  A presidential pop quiz on energy, water, scientific integrity, oceans, and climate change 18

  Posted 1 year, 2 months ago

  Barack Obama's answers to the 14 top science questions facing America.

  (McCain is still working on his answers.)

All Posts

Maywa Montenegro’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  "Carnivores Like Us"

  After reading The End of Food sometime in March, I approached Paul Roberts for a piece that focused more succinctly on meat.

  You all may appreciate it:

  http://seedmagazine.com/news/2008/05/carnivores_like_us.p ...On Why Paul Roberts' End of Food deserves to be digested posted 1 year, 2 months ago 14 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  On missing the boat...

  Thanks, everyone for your comments. I anticipated an outpouring of In Defense of Pollan (sorry, too good to pass up), and all your points are well taken. What I was trying--and obviously failing--to get across is that I DO AGREE WITH THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE of what Pollan is saying. Lasting change will require revolution in BOTH policy and in mindset (which will or should come first is debatable, since they are obviously intertwined). To borrow from a fantastic new book by James Gustave Speth, the potential drivers of transformative change will be twofold: It will require reframing the dominant values that contribute to today's social and environmental alienation. It will require nothing less than a "new consciousness" that gives priority to "nonmaterialistic lives and to our relationships with one another and the natural world."

  Just as importantly, however, it will take a new politics---"a new and vital democratic politics premised on addressing America's growing political inequality and capable of embracing neglected environmental and social needs and sustaining the difficult actions needed."

  My rather long-winded point is that I see the "grand solutions" and the "small solutions" as equal players in driving environmental progress. The reason I critiqued Pollan is that I'm afraid his arguments will be mis-used by those in the establishment to drag their feet on legislation. It's very similar, in fact, to why Joseph Romm gets so indignant about technophilic solutions to climate change. The intentions of Pielke et. al are solid---they care about reducing GHG emissions more, indeed, than most people---but their arguments are in danger of being co-opted by those who would use them as rationale for doing nothing.  On Growing your own food is fine, but governmental action is needed, and soon posted 1 year, 6 months ago 11 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  More on Guyana's Forests

  See Time and New Scientist stories on the same subject.On Private equity firm buys rights to rainforest reserve's environmental services posted 1 year, 6 months ago 6 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  A Manhattan Project for the Demand Side

  You will appreciate Paul Hawken's comment to Revkin's recent coverage of this topic over at Dot Earth:

  "I just read the piece, "A Shift in the Debate Over Global Warming," which focused on technological innovation with respect to climate change. Many people are talking about a Manhattan project on the supply side, but I have been saying, for some time, that we cannot get there from here unless we also have a Manhattan project on the demand side. A lot of capital and focus is on the supply side for myriad and obvious reasons. But demand is the fastest way to create "new" energy. In the US, for every 100 units of energy that we put into our economic system, more than 98 units are wasted accordng to the National Academy of Engineering. Detroit is sitting on more oil than Iraq if it converted to hyperlight, hypersafe, carbon-fiber cars. It would be so much less expensive to invest in America than desert oil. Demand reduction makes new renewable sources of energy, which may be more expensive in relation to carbon-based energy, more affordable because overall energy costs would be going down, not up. Demand is not as sexy as giant wind turbine platforms being towed out to sea or strung up on steel kites into the upper atmosphere, but demand side effciences are faster, less costly, and more effective."On Three non-tech essentials for combating climate change posted 1 year, 7 months ago 12 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  No Pain, No Gain

  To your third point, Joseph-- "Climate change is probably going to have to get much more visibly worse before we see widespread and significant behavior change" -- the country of Australia is a great testament:

  http://seedmagazine.com/news/2007/10/the_climate_crucible ...

  The decade-long crippling drought down under has forced not only some drastic behavioral changes, but a fundamental shift in the way Australians are valuing their resources.

  One can't help but think that if D.C. and New York City got as hot and crispy as Melbourne and Perth, we'd be seeing more movement on the climate front.
  On Three non-tech essentials for combating climate change posted 1 year, 7 months ago 12 Responses