Reflecting on a Decade after We Learned of "An Inconvenient Truth"

Though the film is a decade old now, I find An Inconvenient Truth to be an incredibly compelling narrative on climate change.  The clarity and focus of the work resonates strongly with the increasing visibility of climate change impacts on the earth’s surface today.  Many new documentaries on the subject bring me to despair, including National Geographic’s “Before the Flood,” with Leonardo DiCaprio and the new series featuring David Letterman, the film “Merchants of Doubt,” and contrary to its intentions even Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything.”  I strongly dislike them all.  In this time of significant need, I wish new climate documentaries could reach the heights of accessibility, honesty, detail, and utter lack of snarkiness present in Al Gore’s work on the subject.

Sources:

David, L., Bender, L., & Burns, S. Z. (Producers), & Guggenheim, D. (Director).

(2006). An Inconvenient Truth [Motion Picture]. United States: Paramount Classics.

PlaNYC and Urban Design

Urbanized is an exceptional documentary that compares different cities, the tensions in development and the programming that cities promote.  NYC and the High Line are featured.  I can't help but wish that the story of NYC was more similar to the one for Bogota, Colombia.  I love the perspective that "parking is not a right," but rather transportation should be public, and therefore more inclusive and democratic.  According to the UN World Urbanization Prospects Report, NYC and Newark are expected to grow by over one million people by 2030 (UN 2014, 26), which suggests that transportation constraints will also grow tighter.

Sources:
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2014.  World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision, Highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/352).
 
Urbanized.  Directed by Gary Hustwit.  2011.  London: Swiss Dots.

Food (In)security and the US

Though the US contributes substantially to programs that reduce food insecurity, removing agricultural subsidies may do even more to correct market imbalances that prevent poor countries from investing in agricultural products that benefit their populations in both nutrition and as exports.  US agricultural policies have radically changed in the past decade to combat food insecurity in the US, such as funding programs to reduce food deserts, and subsidizing healthier lunches for school children, but large scale subsidies remain.  A G20 report explained, “Policies that distort production and trade in agricultural commodities potentially impede the achievement of long run food security, by stimulating or conserving production in areas where it would not occur and by distorting, obscuring or impeding the transmission of price signals to competitive producers elsewhere” (p. 24).

G20, 2011.  “Price Volatility in Food and Agricultural Markets: Policy Reponses.”  G20 Policy Report, 2 June 2011.  Downloaded from: http://www.foodsecurityportal.org/sites/default/files/g20_interagency_report_food_price_volatility.pdf [31 October 2016]

Obesity and Environmental Health

According to the WHO Country Profile for the United State, not only does the United States score highly on most measures of health, the US performs better on health measures than other countries in the region.  There is one exception: obesity rates for both men and women are higher in the US, than for the WHO region.  According to the WHO, 87 percent of deaths in the US are from non-communicable diseases, which can be attributed to a variety of behaviors, including smoking (16%) and physical inactivity (43%); since 1980, “body mass index has increased; and glucose levels have risen” (WHO, 2011).  Many public health officials have argued that the fix to these problems lies not in blaming the individual, but by promoting access to healthy foods and by redesigning communities to encourage active, healthy life styles (Dannenberg, Frumkin, and Jackson, 2012).

Dannenberg, A. L., Frumkin, H., and Jackson, R.J., 2012.  Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being, and Sustainability.  Washington, DC: Island Press.

WHO, 2011.  “WHO maps noncommunicable disease trends in all countries.”  News Release.  14 September.  URL: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2011/NCDs_profiles_20110914/en/ [downloaded October 26, 2016]