China pulls smog documentary offline after internet storm - FT.com

China pulls smog documentary offline after internet storm - FT.com: "A documentary critical of China’s air pollution was pulled from major domestic video websites after becoming an internet sensation the same week as a national political meeting in Beijing.
Under the Dome, produced by Chai Jing, a former anchor at the main state broadcaster who left her job last year, was no longer visible on Youku, Tudou, and Tencent from Friday afternoon. The video had racked up more than 166m views on Tencent alone."



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Don't look away now, the climate crisis needs you | Naomi Klein | Environment | The Guardian

Don't look away now, the climate crisis needs you | Naomi Klein | Environment | The Guardian: "he world’s governments have been talking about preventing climate change for more than two decades; they began negotiating the year that Anjali, then 21 years old, was born. And yet as she pointed out in her memorable speech on the convention floor, delivered on behalf of all of the assembled young people: “In that time, you’ve failed to meet pledges, you’ve missed targets, and you’ve broken promises.” In truth, the intergovernmental body entrusted to prevent “dangerous” levels of climate change has not only failed to make progress over its 20-odd years of work (and almost 100 official negotiation meetings since the agreement was adopted), it has overseen a process of virtually uninterrupted backsliding. Our governments wasted years fudging numbers and squabbling over start dates, perpetually trying to get extensions like undergrads with late term papers.

The catastrophic result of all this obfuscation and procrastination is now undeniable. In 2013, global carbon dioxide emissions were 61% higher than they were in 1990, when negotiations toward a climate treaty began in earnest. Indeed the only thing rising faster than our emissions is the output of words pledging to lower them. Meanwhile, the annual UN climate summit, which remains the best hope for a political breakthrough on climate action, has started to seem less like a forum for serious negotiation than a very costly and high-carbon group therapy session, a place for the representatives of the most vulnerable countries in the world to vent their grief and rage while low-level representatives of the nations largely responsible for their tragedies stare at their shoes."



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Don't look away now, the climate crisis needs you | Naomi Klein | Environment | The Guardian

Don't look away now, the climate crisis needs you | Naomi Klein | Environment | The Guardian: "voice came over the intercom: would the passengers of Flight 3935, scheduled to depart Washington DC, for Charleston, South Carolina, kindly collect their carry-on luggage and get off the plane. They went down the stairs and gathered on the hot tarmac. There they saw something unusual: the wheels of the US Airways jet had sunk into the black pavement as if it were wet cement. The wheels were lodged so deep, in fact, that the truck that came to tow the plane away couldn’t pry it loose. The airline had hoped that without the added weight of the flight’s 35 passengers, the aircraft would be light enough to pull. It wasn’t. Someone posted a picture: “Why is my flight cancelled? Because DC is so damn hot that our plane sank four inches into the pavement.”

Eventually, a larger, more powerful vehicle was brought in to tow the plane and this time it worked; the plane finally took off, three hours behind schedule. A spokesperson for the airline blamed the incident on “very unusual temperatures”.

The temperatures in the summer of 2012 were indeed unusually hot. (As they were the year before and the year after.) And it’s no mystery why this has been happening: the profligate burning of fossil fuels, the very thing that US Airways was bound and determined to do despite the inconvenience presented by a melting tarmac. This irony – the fact that the burning of fossil fuels is so radically changing our climate that it is getting in the way of our capacity to burn fossil fuels – did not stop the passengers of Flight 3935 from re-embarking and continuing their journeys. Nor was climate change mentioned in any of the major news coverage of the incident."



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Cool Cities, Elmhurst College co-sponsoring environmental film - Chicago Tribune

Cool Cities, Elmhurst College co-sponsoring environmental film - Chicago Tribune: "The Elmhurst Cool Cities Coalition and Elmhurst College are co-sponsoring a showing of the environmental issue film "Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret" at 11 a.m. Saturday on the college campus.


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The showing is part of the fourth annual One Earth Film Festival, which aims to create opportunities for understanding climate change, sustainability and the ability of people to affect those issues.

"Cowspiracy" is one of 40 films to be shown in 30 venues around the Chicago area over the weekend. The Elmhurst showing will be in Illinois Hall at the college, 190 Prospect Ave., Elmhurst.

The feature-length documentary by Kip Andersen looks at the environmental issues surrounding animal agriculture and questions why leaders in the environmental movement have not been more critical of the industry.


The film's website describes it as revealing "the absolutely devastating environmental impact large-scale factory farming has on our planet and offers a path to global sustainability."

Barbara Lonergan, of the Elmhurst Cool Cities Coalition, noted the message of the film festival fits with the volunteer organization's focus on environmental issues and sustainability.

"This is our first year, so we started with one movie," Lonergan said, adding that a number of members brought the film festival to coalition members' attention.

The coalition focuses on energy efficiency, resource conservation, renewable energy, solid waste reduction and pollution.

"Right now we're working on home energy efficiency," Lonergan said, of community education efforts, which typically include a monthly meeting at the Elmhurst Public Library. Recent meeting topics have included understanding climate change and tips on home composting.

Saturday's film screening will be followed by a short question-and-answer session with environmental consultant Shyamala Rajan. The adjunct professor at Roosevelt University teaches a course on global climate change.

The session will be moderated by Gurram Gopal, an Elmhurst College professor of business administration and a member of the college's Sustainability Committee.

Tables set up in the lobby will offer more information on sustainability issues.

The One Earth Film Festival, sponsored by Oak Park-based Green Community Connections, hopes to draw several thousand viewers to venues, including movie theaters, libraries, universities and other locations across the Chicago area.

Those viewing films during the festival will have an opportunity to vote for their favorite. The winning film will be screened in partnership with the city of Chicago on Earth Day, April 22."



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