Dina Gorelik, 17, in the red hoodie, looked on with fellow striking students from Newton North High School as city councilors gave speeches about climate change at Newton City Hall.SHANNON LARSON
Check out the work of six Boston University journalism students who have been published on the Boston Globe’s Newton page! You can read one student’s account of Friday’s climate strike here.
Many new stories are in the works but we’re always looking for ideas. Email [email protected] with your suggestions!
One wonders if this call, massive as it is, will turn the corner to environmental awareness among the powers that be.
It’s not the first time , since Thomas Malthus that social / academic groups have spoken out.
I remember back in the late 60’s when Ian McHarg, the Scottish Dean of U of Pennsylvania’s school of Landscape and Regional Planning addressed a massive crowd at BU, beginning his address with the never forgotten rage, ( his first loud words), “ Yars is thu ferst gineration with oot a fucha “, rolling his r’s in his thickest Scottish brogue !
It made an indelible impression on me at the time as I’m sure it did on thousands. And there was also Paul Erlich, “earth Day”, the Club of Rome, etc etc. But here we still are.
Good luck to generation Z !
“Earth Day – 1970 “
“ZPG “
and ???
Off topic ?
@blueprint Certainly the oversized population of humans has been a large factor in most, if not all of the planets current ills. But Paul Ehrlich s and others predictions of mass starvation coming by the 70s didn’t pan out. And Mao is hardly a good role model. Millions starved to death during “the Great Leap Forward “, and the cultural revolution was a disaster.
About the only good thing Mao did was raise the standing of women.
I can’t think of a better time for more journalists to be focused on Newton. There are so many issues before the city that are going unreported or under reported.
Blueprint says, “One wonders if this call, massive as it is, will turn the corner to environmental awareness among the powers that be.” Assuming Elizabeth Warren currently to be the leading Democrat for POTUS, and her recently saying she would oppose the building of new nuclear plants in America and work to phase out existing nuclear power from the energy mix, I’m not too hopeful.
That policy is the SINGLE ONE to GUARANTEE no solution to ‘climate change’ (yet as generally known Warren is running on a reportedly aggressive climate change plan entailing zero carbon pollution).
Here’s the gauntlet: #followthemoney!
@Rick Frank,
So the “predictions”, of the 1970s ( Paul Erlich etc ), are invalidated because they didn’t come to pass on schedule, ?
And Mao, because he was a horrible leader, didn’t have a point about overpopulation ?
And what can we find wrong with the Club of Rome ?
@blueprintbill
Predictions are hard, especially about the future. But, it’s very possible, in fact likely, that by 2100 the logistic S curve of the growth will hit at about 10 billion, and start to flatten and decline.
Can we feed that many people? Probably. Will it cause great harm to the earth? Probably. It’s unfortunate that Paul Erlich’s work was so sensationalized.
My point of view is that we need to not only move to non-fossil fuels as we can, but to start mitigation efforts. Unfortunately, the short term profits of the city of Boston and the Mayors who agreed to build all the workforce housing that turning Newton into a city instead of a village (@Greg, the buildings in you top banner are now officially too small. You need to make them 6 and 10 stories).
Ma0 was an idiot. I wouldn’t take his example for anything. He’s been completely discredited, and even in China people are allowed to (finally ) criticize him. Unfortunately President Xi is setting himself up in the same dictatorial fashion. But their form of capitalism has lifted a great many people out of poverty. The environment has suffered greatly because of it though. And freedom of though is greatly diminished. That will be a boon to the US in the long run because without freedom of thought the Chinese will fail to innovate and be stuck copying / stealing from everyone else.
It will be interesting, but I won’t be alive to see it, if capitalism can survive a shrinking population. It’s evolved for a growing population – grow or die. I’m not sure it can.
I’m not that far apart from your position.
I don’t think Building more housing ( big or small ), as vaunted political leaders are calling for or “ raising the bar for building energy efficiency for private development”, will do anything for the environment. Insulate our existing building fabric – Yes!
But new construction large or small is very costly environmentally.
It takes an inordinate amount of fossil fuel to build new, and locally we have done very little to preserve the environment we have already built, allowing teardowns willy nilly via way too permissive zoning regulation, and by the same rules encouraging McMansionization.
I agree the first step is sustainability !
We sustain what existing environmental investment we have already committed to!
Hey @Jim Epstein- Warren is not ” the leading Democrat to be POTUS”. National polling shows Biden leading the field by 11 points. In Iowa, one poll , has Warren ahead by 2 points. And BTW- the latest Fox poll has Biden beating the “idiot in chief ” by 14 points. Early but encouraging.
Peter, we all know how the “polls” turned out in 2016.
BTW that “idiot” you refer to has brought about this nation’s strongest economy and lowest unemployment among all groups in modern history. You may not like him, but ‘idiot” he’s not. I’d compare him more to the roadrunner and the Democrats/main stream media to Wile E. Coyote. “Beep beep”
Are you a Trump supporter? Wow. How awful. It really is true- Trump is an idiot, a misogynist, a racist, a failure on so many basic human levels. He’s all yours- enjoy.
Your statement about Warren being the “leading democrat ” was just plain wrong. Thanks.
Jim Epstein is a troll who will happily take any thread off topic to focus on his national political views. I encourage others here to not take his bait.
Greg,
Seems to me that the topic entailed the climate strike. Please explain where I took this thread, or any thread, off topic. Examples please.
BTW, I’ve received a number of email and other forms of thanks for my NewCAL comments for enlightening on the NewCAL in a park threat, including from City Councilors.
Anyway, thanks for your kind words.
Peter,
Your last comment is typical where substance is lacking. Plus, yours may be a case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Maybe Gail Spector’s whiz kids could use Maplight to do some crackerjack data mining and #followthemoney ;D (how deep will they dig?)