Mark Bittman’s “The Endless Summer”

The failing state of the environment if not a new issue, as it appears in the news more and more. As we undergo the hottest month on record, with droughts leaving much of the country barren, the growing problem is just heating up. As issues involving our environment are becoming more pressing, though it appears to be more widely ignored. In Mark Bittman’s piece in the New York Times’ Opinionator, titled “The Endless Summer,” he rhetorically asked “how bad will things get” and how long “before we wake up to it.”
        The strangest thing about environmental woes is that people are just not ready to face the facts. Texas Governor, and almost-GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry said in an interview last spring that he didn’t believe in climate change.

"I think we're seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists that are coming forward and questioning the original idea that manmade global warming is what is causing the climate to change," Perry said in an interview. “I don't think from my perspective that I want to be engaged in spending that much money on still a scientific theory that has not been proven and from my perspective is more and more being put into question."

Though it’s still baffling that someone in any sort of leadership status, especially a governor of a state, could even question that climate change is just a “theory.” Though, Perry is not exactly the poster-child for rational thought when it comes to social issues. Just ask the LGBT community.

In Bittman’s piece, he talks about how the wealthy in this country are able to see the ongoing changes in our environment as “manageable.”

“As long as you’re wealthy and able to move around at will. But it’s not manageable to the corn farmers losing their crops,” said Bittman in his article. “The ranchers selling off their cattle, the thousands of people in Colorado burned out of their homes in fires caused by the worst drought since 1956 or those who will lose their homes or jobs to fire, flood, drought or whatever in coming years.”

Bittman also mentions the recently released book Global Weirdness, which explains climate change in simple, easy-to-understand language and ultra-short chapters. It’s calmly toned informational book that author Michael Lemonick explains is due to the fact that “some people respond well to ‘Big trouble is coming and we must do something immediately,’ but others are overwhelmed and just turn off. We believe that if you look at all the available evidence it’s clear we’re pushing the earth into a regime where it hasn’t been before, and the effects could well be disastrous.”

In Lemonick’s interview on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show, he explained how easy it is to disregard climate change, as it’s happening so slowly, though there are many indicators that our weather is being changed because of it.

“It’s too early to connect the dots with a really thick, solid black line,” he said in the interview. “The reason being that climate change pushes on weather in a more statistical way. Meaning you can’t say this particular heat-wave was caused by climate change, but you can say is that in a warming world, these things will come along more and more often.”

The argument that climate change is going to lead to major problems for a lot of people living on this planet is not a new notion, though the consequences that the weather of our future will bring is something that appears to not have stuck with the general populace.

Growing concern/disregard for the environment are one of the many aspects of american public policy that are ignoring real issue at hand; the widening gap between the rich and poor in America. However, it’s important to look at the aspects of industrialization that were the cause of these “greenhouse gases” - oil, coal, and other fossil fuels. These are all multibillion-dollar industries that have strong lobbyist that have Washington in a choke hold.

Bittman mentions the Kyoto Protocol in his piece, a 15 year-old agreement that claimed countries who signed would annually reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. The protocol was ratified and acted upon by almost every country in the world, including every industrialized nation but one: the United States.

“Bill Clinton signed Kyoto,” said Bittman. “George W. Bush, despite an election pledge, repudiated it.”

Only reducing carbon emissions can keep matters from becoming worse, but who is willing to take pay-cut for it? Americans don’t seem to be the answer, and its incredibly selfish of us to push this burden on other countries, and burying our heads in the sand. It becomes increasingly hard to do, especially with weather acting as weird as it had recently, things like winters that feel like springs and blizzards before Halloween.

“Things like snow storms in October is not something that’s unheard of,” said Lemonick, when asked about the bizarre snowstorm last October. “The question is, are they happening more often? And following to see if they continue to happen more often as this century plays out.”

In an uncertain future on the health of our planet, concerns sprung early this month as NASA’s own Curiosity rover droid landed on Mars, taking photos of new strange planet. Thousands of views on the web watched the landing in real-time, through a live webcast, and many followers on twitter posted statuses along the lines of, “Time to pollute Mars, the new Earth!”

It appears that climate change is something that has left us with more questions than answers, and a heavy sense of shame as a species. Though it’s not hopeless, it’s crunch time to open-up to new ideas and start combating the change that has already taken effect. It will take time, though, and if there is a virtue humans are not keen on it is patience.

Why the Caged Bird Tweets

For my article in The Ticker on the subject - Click here!

As technology evolves, so does communication. With the use of new social networking sites such as Facebook, and especially Twitter any thought can be broadcasted to thousands of users with a click of button. However, are all these thoughts really post worthy, or in Twitter’s case, tweet worthy?
In the case of the 2012 Olympics, it felt like Twitter was a place where spoilers lurked, instead of usual culture commentary. Take, for instance the every popular #NBCFAIL hashtag, which has been used to bash NBC’s various problems broadcasting the summer games, stemming from time-delays to lagging live-streams.

Richard Sandomir discussed the network’ issue with the time delay versus the tweet-it-now world of social media in his New York Times article, “Olympic Viewers Have a New Reason to Complain, and the Means to Do It.” 

In that, Sandomir claims, “The past animosity rested on tape-delaying certain marquee sports into prime time. But now Twitter has turned into a fiery digital soapbox against NBC, as its users have merged their resentment over tape delay with problems viewing the live-streams.”

Though complaints have been made and tweets have been tagged, it didn’t seem to have effect NBC’s glowing ratings for the opening ceremony held late last month. With a reported 40.7 million views for the opening ceremony and 28.7 the following night for the first round of competition, NBC felt they have little to worry about when it comes to broadcasting live, regardless of tweets.


That was, until a reporter took the issue a step further, took control of the situation through twitter. In an article reported by the New York Times, Los Angeles-based correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, Guy Adams, began venting his feelings about NBC’s delayed TV coverage. He tweeted his frustrations on the time delay as well as NBC’s attitude towards “pretending” to broadcast the games live. It was his last tweet, however, that sealed his fate.


“The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven’t started yet is Gary Zenkel,” read Adam’s tweet. “Tell him what u think!”


Adams ended the tweet with Zenkel’s work email, and instantly he was retweeted and some angry followers added the hashtag #NBCFAIL. The tweet was taken down, as    Adam’s account was suspended by Twitter after Zenkel, an executive at NBC,  filed a complaint with Twitter, finding that Adam’s had posted his email to be harassing.


Though he had posted the email of a network executive on his twitter for all his followers to see, tweet, retweet and use for themselves, Adam’s still stressed in a statement, “I do not wish Mr. Zenkel any harm.”


The extreme lapse in judgment is testament to just how much of a ripple effect Twitter’s posts can create. Unlike a site like Facebook, where posts can be contained to only a user’s circle of friends, Twitter is more like posting into the wide world of the internet. Whatever happens after a tweet is posted, however, depends on the user of Twitter itself.


It’s not just news-outlets who are falling to understand the ramifications Twitter, as many celebrities have be aware to the scathing punishment that comes with posting without discretion. Once used for a way to better connect with fans, Celebrities such as Charlie Sheen, Alec Baldwin and Lily Allen have since signed-off their account for good.


In a New York Times article, Seth Meyers, a Los Angeles clinical psychologist who counts several celebrities among his patients, explained the dropping number in high-profile tweeters.
“Sharing so much often backfires and invites negative response, which is difficult for most celebrities to take in,” said Meyers. “They quit Twitter, or their publicist tells them they need to quit for the sake of their career.”


Much like Adam’s, many celebrities do not comprehend the magnitude of their following and just how many people can read what they tweet, and share it to others. Also, Twitter archives tweets, so even if they are deleted the site can still pull them up if needed.


James Franco, one of Hollywood's hottest young actors, quit Facebook after tweeting some unflattering remarks, and off-color posts.


“’My thought was: ‘This is my Twitter. I can do whatever I want,’ ” said Franco in an April 2011 interview. “But certain companies I work with contacted me about what I was saying.”
Does this mean the end for Twitter? Are we perhaps living in an era where users are providing too much information? Meyers doesn’t think so, as he notes that many celebrities return to twitter, like a boomerang. Users like John Mayer, Miley Cyrus and Chris Brown have returned from short-term hiatus. Even Adams has returned to Twitter, his account unsuspended as he continues to tweet about the 2012 Olympics.


Why do users keep coming back even after such major gaffs? Meyer claims it has to do with the fact that famous people love a following.


“For some celebrities,” he said, “they go back to Twitter because they need the attention and the audience.”


Meyer’s claims that the draw of twitter is the constant feedback from others, and the instant gratification creates a feeling of being important. Especially for high-profile celebrities and journalist, having a following and being able to cause controversy feeds directly into their narcissism, allowing them to “keep up their grandiose image of themselves.”


The lure of Twitter could lie within the inner narcissist of not just high-profile users, who are attracted to the attention, but everyday users. They keep coming back, constantly tweeting, and always following. Twitter has evolved to become more than newsfeed of what people had for breakfast, or pictures of their desks, it has become a soap box for everyone can yell their opinions into a crowd. And while blunders are embarrassing, deep down users enjoy being burnt for what they’ve tweeted because it means someone was listening.

Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?

In Stephen Marche’s article Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?, it’s easy to see where he has found the dots in believing that Facebook, as well as other social networking sites are creating more shallow relationships and isolating Americans. While I see how he came to the conclusion, I feel like Marche has connected his dots a bit too cleanly with a broad-felt marker rather than a fine-point pen.

In his article, Marche describes social media to be more of a person-to-person connection, in which everyone connects with everyone randomly. In reality, when a person first joins a site like Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ it begins with them connecting to their friends and family, their immediate contacts. These are people they most likely talk to on a regular basis. As these connections expand, it’s to second degree connections - friends of friends, sisters of boyfriends, cousin’s fiance’s, etc. The third degree being people in similar schools, jobs, and towns. Once a user gets to the point where they’re being bombarded by updates and photos of people they don’t even talk to in real life. This is where the sense of isolation lies, not that people are spending too much time on these site, but that these sites are filled with people they don’t know.

In the August 6, 2012 episode of the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC, James Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media as well as author of the book Talking Back to Facebook offered his two-cents on the way people use social media today. The means by which social media has improved the social lives of people are just as astounding as the claims being made by Marche. 

He talked about having a “media diet” which limits time spent on these sites as well as how we use them. Doing so will allow users to “deal with [time spent on Facebook] in their own ways, relating to people and taking advantage of new technologies but not letting it to completely dominate our lives.” 

Steyer also talked about the roles of parents and their children, discussing how the internet forces parents to have conversations with their children regarding social issues such as sexuality, body image and bully. “Empathy is an important thing for parents to talk about with kids,” said Steyer, “In an age where Cyber Bullying has been in the news the last few years, it’s important for everyone to understand how we’re supposed to communicate and treat other human beings.”

In Marche’s piece he writes, “We should recognize that is it not use isolation that is rising sharply. It’s loneliness, too. And loneliness makes us miserable.” With that said, I think it’s important to instead of finding excuses as to why we’re lonely, pointing fingers at the world wide internet for a scapegoat, but to change our behavior. Taking a step away from technology and into the sunlight, where we can have a conversation with each-other that doesn’t end with “TTYL.”