Journalism professor and political activist Robert Jensen interviews Abe Osheroff, 90, whose actions in pursuit of peace and justice range from youthful resistance to Depression evictions, to labor organizing in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, to service in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, to community development projects in the Deep South during the Civil Rights era, to public service in post-Revolutionary Nicaragua, to opposition to US aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. Osheroff is crusty, pithy, and, I think, wise. Jensen elicits a rich distillation of the lessons of a long life in service of common good.

Abe Osheroff – intro

Dimitri Zenghelis reviews books by climate scientists Stephen Schneider and James Hansen, and by public relations expert James Hoggan. All three authors describe how people who perceive gain in misleading the public about climate have acted to suppress sound science and those who practice it and disseminate their findings.

Science Fact, Climate Fiction— Clarifying the Debate » American Scientist

For those who wonder about our ability to transition smoothly to sustainability, Matt Savinar offers opportunity to consider how and why we’ll fail, what the consequences may be, and how we may individually prepare. He argues persuasively and presents a mountain of evidence to support his view.

Peak Oil, Matt Savinar, Life After the Oil Crash

For those who’ve lived through campaigns to deny the harms of tobacco, asbestos, and a host of other things sold to generate narrow individual gain at broad public expense, current efforts to dismiss evidence that humans are causing devastating ecological change by burning fossil fuels and disrupting climate ring familiar. Greenpeace researcher Cindy Baxter has detailed connections among renegade scientists (e.g., Fred Singer), front organizations with Orwellian names (e.g., Information Council on the Environment), and industry backers (e.g., Exxon Mobil) who for more than twenty years have lobbied, spun, and distorted to prevent people from realizing the extent of the threat posed by human action to alter climate and the urgency of addressing this threat. She ends with an excellent list of resources for learning about climate change, how we’re driving it, and what we can do about it.

Dealing in Doubt | Greenpeace International

Dan Gilbert, Harvard psychologist and author of Stumbling on Happiness, (and three co-authors) demonstrate that we more accurately predict how we’ll feel after one or another experience when we ask someone who has had that experience than when we rely upon our own imagination. He further shows that few of us accept this, and that we instead cling to the notion that we’re somehow different enough from each other for our own simulations to be more accurate than others’ reports.

The Surprising Power of Neighborly Advice — Gilbert et al. 323 (5921): 1617 — Science