2006.08.13: August 13, 2006: Headlines: Figures: COS - Congo Kinsasha: Global Warming: Environment: Baltimore Sun: Tom Pelton reviews RPCV Mike Tidwell's The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities
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2006.08.13: August 13, 2006: Headlines: Figures: COS - Congo Kinsasha: Global Warming: Environment: Baltimore Sun: Tom Pelton reviews RPCV Mike Tidwell's The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities
Tom Pelton reviews RPCV Mike Tidwell's The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities
Most of Tidwell's solutions are thankfully logical. He describes how he cut his own electricity consumption in half by replacing an old refrigerator with a more efficient, EPA-approved "Energy Star" model, and his conventional light bulbs with fluorescents. He also cut his gasoline consumption in half by buying a hybrid Toyota Prius. But Tidwell also suggests that consumers stop eating beef and pork, because the animals produce methane that contributes to global warming. This is the kind of politically tone-deaf suggestion - Americans giving up steak? - that opens him up to attack as an out-of-touch liberal from Takoma Park. Author Mike Tidwell, founder of the Chesapeake Climate Action Committee, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Congo Kinshasa.
Tom Pelton reviews RPCV Mike Tidwell's The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities
A practical, urgent call for change in America's environmental policy
By Tom Pelton
Sun Staff
Originally published August 13, 2006
>>>The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities
Simon & Schuster / 180 pages / $24
James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned recently that global warming is melting the Greenland ice sheet at twice the rate of just five years ago.
Instead of facing a sea-level rise of up to 3 feet by 2100, as predicted by the National Academy of Sciences and many other experts, cities like Baltimore, New York and Miami could be inundated much more quickly. Hansen's grim calculus suggests a 23-foot surge in sea levels within a century.
The alarm sounds shrill and so dire that some want to shut it off. Or give up and live in willful ignorance. But Hansen is not the lunatic fringe. He's the chief climate modeler for President Bush, the former oilman who has finally acknowledged - but not acted on - the broader problem of global warming.
Such warnings persuaded Mike Tidwell, a veteran author and climate activist from Takoma Park, to write a passionate call for a revolution in American environmental policy.
It's not the first book on the subject, and it covers some of the same ground as Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. But what makes Tidwell's account valuable is that it's extraordinarily well written, offers concrete solutions and doesn't carry Gore's political baggage.
Readers from Tidwell's home state will be disturbed by his predictions of storm damage to Maryland.
As warming seas continue to stoke more intense hurricanes, Tidwell predicts the flooding of parts of Baltimore, the destruction of Assateague Island, waters pouring into the Washington suburbs, the Eastern Shore being almost cut in half by the swollen Nanticoke River and the destruction of the Blackwater National Widlife Refuge.
To prevent Katrina-like calamities from hitting other cities around the world, we need to act within the next 10 years - or else the train will be impossible to stop, Tidwell argues.
"To visit with the knowledge that the sky itself is in the grip of a fever, storing up power for even darker events to come, is to see and feel amid the muddy wrecked streets of New Orleans a strange new universe looming just beyond America's new horizon," Tidwell writes.
Tidwell is well known in the Maryland environmental movement, as director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. It's one of several groups that succeeded in persuading the Maryland General Assembly this spring to overcome opposition by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and the power industry and pass a law requiring a 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gases from coal-fired power plants operated in the state.
Most of Tidwell's solutions are thankfully logical. He describes how he cut his own electricity consumption in half by replacing an old refrigerator with a more efficient, EPA-approved "Energy Star" model, and his conventional light bulbs with fluorescents. He also cut his gasoline consumption in half by buying a hybrid Toyota Prius.
Such moves toward conservation - especially when backed by tax breaks or other government incentives - make sense, because they fit perfectly with the American passion for technology. Tidwell's advocacy of increased use of ethanol and corn-burning furnaces in homes is also likely to resonate with voters in red and blue states alike.
But Tidwell also suggests that consumers stop eating beef and pork, because the animals produce methane that contributes to global warming. This is the kind of politically tone-deaf suggestion - Americans giving up steak? - that opens him up to attack as an out-of-touch liberal from Takoma Park.
And even though Tidwell urges tough choices, he refuses to consider expanded nuclear power as a proven way to generate more electricity without any global warming gases. He calls it "dangerous" even though a half-century of nuclear generation in the United States hasn't caused a single radiation death.
If global warming is truly a crisis that threatens to destroy our civilization, perhaps environmentalists need to make sacrifices, too, and give up some ideological rigidity.
When this story was posted in August 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:
Peace Corps Online The Independent News Forum serving Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
| Peace Corps' Screening and Medical Clearance The purpose of Peace Corps' screening and medical clearance process is to ensure safe accommodation for applicants and minimize undue risk exposure for volunteers to allow PCVS to complete their service without compromising their entry health status. To further these goals, PCOL has obtained a copy of the Peace Corps Screening Guidelines Manual through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and has posted it in the "Peace Corps Library." Applicants and Medical Professionals (especially those who have already served as volunteers) are urged to review the guidelines and leave their comments and suggestions. Then read the story of one RPCV's journey through medical screening and his suggestions for changes to the process. |
| Gates charity races to spend billions Warren E. Buffett’s gift of $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation means that for tax reasons, starting in 2009, the foundation must distribute $3 billion annually, or a little more than twice what it distributed last year.
PCOL Comment: The Foundation says that "preventing the spread of HIV is the most durable long-term solution to the AIDS epidemic, and a top priority for the foundation." Peace Corps Volunteers and Returned Volunteers have been doing just that in AIDS Education for the past 15 years. Why not consider a $100M annual contribution to the Peace Corps to put 2,500 additional volunteers in the field to expand AIDS education worldwide? |
| The Peace Corps is "fashionable" again The LA Times says that "the Peace Corps is booming again and "It's hard to know exactly what's behind the resurgence." PCOL Comment: Since the founding of the Peace Corps 45 years ago, Americans have answered Kennedy's call: "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Over 182,000 have served. Another 200,000 have applied and been unable to serve because of lack of Congressional funding. The Peace Corps has never gone out of fashion. It's Congress that hasn't been keeping pace. |
| Changing the Face of Hunger In his new book, Former Congressman Tony Hall (RPCV Thailand) says humanitarian aid is the most potent weapon the United States can deploy against terrorism. An evangelical Christian, he is a big believer in faith-based organizations in the fight against hunger. Members of Congress have recently recommended that Hall be appointed special envoy to Sudan to focus on ending the genocide in Darfur. |
| PC will not return to East Timor in 2006 Volunteers serving in East Timor have safely left the country as a result of the recent civil unrest and government instability. Latest: The Peace Corps has informed us that at this time, the Peace Corps has no plans to re-enter the country in 2006. The Peace Corps recently sent a letter offering eligible volunteers the opportunity to reinstate their service in another country. |
| Chris Dodd considers run for the White House Senator Chris Dodd plans to spend the next six to eight months raising money and reaching out to Democrats around the country to gauge his viability as a candidate. Just how far Dodd can go depends largely on his ability to reach Democrats looking for an alternative to Hillary Clinton. PCOL Comment: Dodd served as a Volunteer in the Dominican Republic and has been one of the strongest supporters of the Peace Corps in Congress. |
| Vasquez testifies before Senate Committee Director Vasquez testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on his nomination as the new Representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture replacing Tony Hall. He has been the third longest serving Peace Corps Director after Loret Ruppe Miller and Sargent Shriver. PCOL Comment: Read our thanks to Director Vasquez for his service to the Peace Corps. |
| Peace Corps stonewalls on FOIA request The Ashland Daily Tidings reports that Peace Corps has blocked their request for information on the Volkart case. "After the Tidings requested information pertaining to why Volkart was denied the position — on March 2 — the newspaper received a letter from the Peace Corps FOIA officer stating the requested information was protected under an exemption of the act." The Dayton Daily News had similar problems with FOIA requests for their award winning series on Volunteer Safety and Security. |
| PCOL readership increases 100% Monthly readership on "Peace Corps Online" has increased in the past twelve months to 350,000 visitors - over eleven thousand every day - a 100% increase since this time last year. Thanks again, RPCVs and Friends of the Peace Corps, for making PCOL your source of information for the Peace Corps community. And thanks for supporting the Peace Corps Library and History of the Peace Corps. Stay tuned, the best is yet to come. |
| History of the Peace Corps PCOL is proud to announce that Phase One of the "History of the Peace Corps" is now available online. This installment includes over 5,000 pages of primary source documents from the archives of the Peace Corps including every issue of "Peace Corps News," "Peace Corps Times," "Peace Corps Volunteer," "Action Update," and every annual report of the Peace Corps to Congress since 1961. "Ask Not" is an ongoing project. Read how you can help. |
| RPCV admits to abuse while in Peace Corps Timothy Ronald Obert has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a minor in Costa Rica while serving there as a Peace Corps volunteer. "The Peace Corps has a zero tolerance policy for misconduct that violates the law or standards of conduct established by the Peace Corps," said Peace Corps Director Gaddi H. Vasquez. Could inadequate screening have been partly to blame? Mr. Obert's resume, which he had submitted to the Peace Corps in support of his application to become a Peace Corps Volunteer, showed that he had repeatedly sought and obtained positions working with underprivileged children. Read what RPCVs have to say about this case. |
| Why blurring the lines puts PCVs in danger When the National Call to Service legislation was amended to include Peace Corps in December of 2002, this country had not yet invaded Iraq and was not in prolonged military engagement in the Middle East, as it is now. Read the story of how one volunteer spent three years in captivity from 1976 to 1980 as the hostage of a insurrection group in Colombia in Joanne Marie Roll's op-ed on why this legislation may put soldier/PCVs in the same kind of danger. Latest: Read the ongoing dialog on the subject. |
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Story Source: Baltimore Sun
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Figures; COS - Congo Kinsasha; Global Warming; Environment
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