I loved this bit from US environmental activist Bill McKibben, who is guest blogging on Andrew Sullivan's site:
Every day there’s something more immediately important happening in the world: ISIS is seizing an airbase this morning, and California is recovering from an earthquake, and Michael Brown is being buried.
But there’s nothing more important that’s happening each and every day than the ongoing deterioration of the planet on which we depend. Though on a geological time scale it’s proceeding at a hopelessly rapid pace, in terms of the news cycle it happens just slowly enough to be mainly invisible. It’s only when a new study emerges, or a shocking new data set, that we pay momentary attention, until the Next New Thing distracts us.
Quite right. The news media focuses on events, and the deterioration of our environment is a process, not an event.
So what's the 'shocking new data set' McKibben is referring to? A new study published in Science claiming that invertebrate numbers have dropped by a staggering 45% over the last 35 years. Good grief.
Photo by Flickr user Dan Foy.
