District Guide: Global Perspectives: Eyes Wide Open

Checking the Facts

Snopes devotes scholarly diligence to rumours, photos-gone-viral, and other statements that often pass for fact in popular culture

FactCheck applies the Snopes model strictly to politics

FlackCheck describes common rhetorical tricks and posts videos of politicians and media personalities using them to make their positions look better and their opponents look worse

Data

Population Clock gives real-time estimates of U.S. and world population, with further information on age, gender, region, and density

Worldometers gives population data as wall as figures on spending, health, food, energy, and environment

C02Now.org gives the latest C02 level in atmosphere

Environmental News

Climate Desk

Environmental News Network

Grist

Inside Climate News A Pulitzer Prize-winning, non-profit, non-partisan news organization dedicated to covering climate change, energy and the environment

Worldwatch Institute A Vision for a Sustainable World

Food and Water

Food and Water Watch offers coverage of food and water issues, from farmed fish to desalination

Food Rights Network has the latest news on food safety issues

"Power Steer" Michael Pollan's article follows one setter from birth to butcher, revealing how much fossil fuel is hidden in industrial produced meat

Saving the Ocean Population, pollution, overfishing, and climate have all put the oceans in peril. Carl Safina's show looks at those who are working to protect and restore them

Climate

"Global Warming's Terrifying New Math Bill McKibben's article looks at the consequences and urges us to keep our fossil fuels safely buried

NASA's Climate page offers information, maps, images and interactives about climate

Skeptical Science gathers the arguments used against the notion that humans are behind global warming and puts them under the microscope

Population

The Habitable Planet looks at many sides of population

Population Connection has a great video that lets you watch world population growth over the past two thousand years

"Beyond 7 Billion" is a Los Angeles Times five part report on population. Online, with photos and videos

Featured Book

Eyes Wide Open by Paul Fleischman
Call Number: 363.7 FLE
We're living in an Ah-Ha moment. Take 250 years of human ingenuity. Add abundant fossil fuels. The result: a population and lifestyle never before seen. The downsides weren't visible for centuries, but now they are. Suddenly everything needs rethinking suburbs, cars, fast food, cheap prices. It's a changed world. This book explains it. Not with isolated facts, but the principles driving attitudes and events, from vested interests to denial to big-country syndrome. Because money is as important as molecules in the environment, science is joined with politics, history, and psychology to provide the briefing needed to comprehend the 21st century.

Recommended Book

Our Choice by Al Gore
Call Number: 363.738 GOR
It is now abundantly clear that we have at our fingertips all of the tools we need to solve the climate crisis. The only missing ingredient is collective will. Properly understood, the climate crisis is an unparalleled opportunity to finally and effectively address many persistent causes of suffering and misery that have long been neglected, and to transform the prospects of future generations, giving them a chance to live healthier, more prosperous lives as they continue their pursuit of happiness. Our Choice gathers in one place all of the most effective solutions that are available now and that, together, will solve this crisis. It is meant to depoliticize the issue as much as possible and inspire readers to take action "not only on an individual basis but as participants in the political processes by which every country, and the world as a whole, makes the choice that now confronts us. There is an old African proverb that says, "If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go together." We have to go far, quickly. We can solve the climate crisis. It will be hard, to be sure, but if we can make the choice to solve it, I have no doubt whatsoever that we can and will succeed. " AL GORE, from the introduction