Apologies – fun but very busy day yesterday. Two good things not to miss. Okay, good is not the word.
Sandy was devastating to scientific research on a scale that we probably can’t imagine:
Flooding and blackouts caused by super storm Sandy have had a devastating impact on scores of scientists in the Big Apple, with one research center losing thousands of lab mice as well as precious reagents—a situation that could set some researchers back years.
At New York University’s Smilow Research Center, on the eastern edge of Manhattan, which lost power shortly after Sandy struck on Monday night, hundreds of biological samples were destroyed as freezers thawed and refrigerators warmed. And as animal care facilities in the basement flooded, hundreds of mice and rats were killed—animals that had been painstakingly genetically engineered for use as disease models.
And, some people aren’t going to take it anymore, and we need more of them. Mainstream media types have actually no constituency beyond their own sake and that of their corporate super-structures that exist because of the 24-7 need for news vacuum that is their own creation. This has to change:
And I told them that I was there, in that room, because the national conversation we’re having about this situation, this emergency, is utterly inadequate —or, really, nonexistent. And I looked Peter in the eye, and told him that I’m sorry, but that’s completely unacceptable to me. If we can’t speak honestly about this crisis — if we can’t lay it on the line — then how can we look at ourselves in the mirror?
Since I had requested the meeting, I told Peter that I hoped to frame the discussion around two points:
First: We need to see a much greater sense of urgency in the media’s coverage of climate change, including in the Globe‘s editorial and opinion pages. This is more than an environmental crisis: it’s an existential threat, and it should be treated like one, without fear of sounding alarmist, rather than covered as just another special interest, something only environmentalists care about. And it should be treated as a central issue in this election, regardless of whether the candidates or the political media are talking about it.