Global Warming Fatigue?
Gallup's annual poll about the environment, released on March 14, 2011, indicates that Americans are less worried about climate change than they've been since 1998. This despite continued reports about melting glaciers, shrinking polar ice caps, and record high temperatures being recorded around the world. The most obvious reason? It's the economy, stupid! As usual, economic doom trumps environmental doom, and analysts say the economic downturn is the most likely factor in the trend. An article from AFP.com gives the details: "Just 51 percent of Americans -- or one percentage point more than in 1998 -- said they worry a great deal or fair amount about climate change, Gallup's annual environment poll says. "In 2008, a year after former US vice president Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize, two-thirds of Americans were concerned about climate change. "The rate of concern among Americans has fallen steadily since then to 60 percent in 2009 and 52 percent last year. "The poll also found that for the first time since the late 1990s, a minority of Americans -- 49 percent -- believe global warming has already begun to impact the planet, down sharply from more than six in 10 Americans who three years ago said climate change was already impacting the globe. "'The reasons for the decline in concern are not obvious, though the economic downturn could be a factor,' Gallup analysts say, citing a poll from two years ago that shows that in the minds of Americans, economy takes precedence over environment. "The pollsters also found that a plurality of Americans -- 43 percent -- think the media exaggerates the seriousness of global warming, and that how Americans view climate change and its impacts varies widely depending on their political beliefs. "Just over a quarter of Americans believe reports in the press about climate change are generally correct, while nearly three in 10 believe the US media understates the effects of global warming. "Conservative Republicans are three times as likely as liberal Democrats to think the media is exaggerating the severity of global warming, while Democrats are roughly twice as likely as Republicans to be concerned about climate change and to think it is already impacting the planet."
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Much Ado About Publishing
Apocalypse Fatigue
I have "Apocalypse Fagitue" and it's not even 2012 yet. If the Mayans were right and the calendar ends in 2012 (presumably taking the world with it), I might actually be relieved. If it doesn't end, I'll bet a lot of people will be ticked off. I wrote about that in "The End of the World....Or Your Money Back," in this column more than a year ago. Everything, now, is some kind of an apocalypse.
Forget the champagne. We rang in the 2011 New Year with dead birds. First, thousands of them. What people called a "Birdpocalypse" and a "Flockapocalypse" went global, and who knows how many dead birds the world over have fallen from the sky... or why and how.
In solidarity with their feathered friends, thousands of dead fish celebrated New Year's by mysteriously washing up on shores in a, you guessed it, "Fishpocalypse."
Snooki's novel was published during the first week of this new year, in keeping with the idea of branding a moron's name on anything and everything. This event, which subsequently made her a New York Times best-selling author, was just another in what I call publishing's on-going "Pubpocalypse."
Quality publishing has died so many times, that it's no surprise that zombie books won't die either.
Borders, however, looks like it finally might.
Helen Thomas, a revered journalist until she put her 90-year-old foot into her anti-Semitic mouth, returned after a seven-month banishment, and got herself a column in a Virginia newspaper. I'm just gonna call that an "Oypocalypse."
In a "Huckapocalypse," idiots censored "The N-word" out of a Mark Twain classic.
And, also, during the first week of the year, we learned that before she died, in a "Gotchapocalypse," Elizabeth Edwards dumped her estranged hubby, former presidential candidate John Edwards, out of her will.
John Boehner became the new Speaker of the House, and, of course, cried. His "Sobpocalypse" continues.
During the winter, people couldn't help sensationalizing the snow and ice -- the normal stuff that falls from the sky during that time of the year -- by calling every storm a "Snowpocalypse."
Meanwhile, despite hinky-looking stats that claim that unemployment is becoming less of a problem, we're still in the midst of a "Jobpocalypse."
Late winter and spring brought what I call a "Dic(k)pocalypse" (and I'm sure others have also thought of this term) as people throughout the Middle East and Africa tossed dictators out of power. That's the good kind of apocalypse, and it continues.
A huge quake, a devastating tsunami, and the resulting nuclear power plant woes in Japan just fueled the end-of-the-worlders' glee as they looked for biblical justification for the events. Those cruel, misguided people are part of the on-going "Schmuckpocalypse."
News flash, folks: Not everything is a sign that we're nearing The End of the World.
Not even those reports of a chocolate shortage. Though I'm not sure some of us could survive a "Chocapocalypse." I know I couldn't.
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As a journalist, columnist, essayist, and media critic, Nina L. Diamond's work has appeared in many publications, including Omni magazine, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.
She was a regular contributor to a number of "late, great" national, regional, and newspaper Sunday magazines, including Omni; the award-winning South Florida magazine; and Sunshine, the Ft. Lauderdale (now South Florida) Sun-Sentinel's Sunday magazine.
She covers the arts and sciences; the media, publishing, and current affairs; and writes feature articles, interviews, commentary, humor/satire/parody, essays, and reviews.
Ms. Diamond is also the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers (Lotus Press) and the unfortunately titled Purify Your Body (Three Rivers Press/Crown/Random House) , a book of natural health reporting which has been a selection of The Book-of-the-Month Club's One Spirit Book Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club.
For its entire run from 1984-1998, she was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, which aired on WLRN-FM in Miami.
She has appeared on Oprah, discussing the publishing industry, but, in a case of very bad timing, that appearance was two years before her first book was published.
She has written her Much Ado About Publishing column for Independent Publisher since 2003.
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Read some of Nina's previous Much Ado About Publishing columns:
When Only the Story Survives
Authors Uncovered
Choosing Crazy
The Nice Guy Behind Evil Wylie: A Conversation with Andrew Shaffer
De-Witched, Authored & Remaindered
Moron Press: The Finest in Dreck Lit
Playing 20 Questions with Evil Wylie
When LOL Meets PPF
Sunday in the Park with Scarlett, Seuss, Webster, Zhivago & Salinger
There's No Such Thing As a Quick Remote
Thanks for the Genes
From Blog to Eternity