The French filmmaker and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, 76, has made his valedictory statement. The ravishing documentary Legacy, now streaming, is a visual and aural love letter to our planet, the creatures that inhabit it, and the ones (us) who are destroying it. Employing languid footage shot from a hot-air balloon, as he did in his...
9/15-21: CLIMATE WEEK AT MICHAELKONIK.com The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power’s main public relations initiative — when it’s not justifying secret expenditures from a union slush fund — is to convince the world that it’s a “green” company focused on renewable energy sources. That image plays slightly better than “mega-polluting utility contributing daily...
Because the only war we should be fighting is against Climate Change and our own selfishness and greed. Because the two Money Parties — Republican and Democrat — are cancers on our republic. Because bloodless, consensual revolutions are always better than bloody ones. Because “family values” and the “rights of the unborn” should include future...
Garden paradox: no February blossoms without climate change.
CLIMATE STRIKE WEEK at MICHAELKONIK.com, 9-15-21 In the days preceding the storm of the century, two candidates running for President of the United States strenuously assured voters that they would pump more crude, frack more natural gas, and burn more coal than the other guy. Whether or not an energy policy built on a fossil-fuel...
As our species hurtles toward extinction, a beautiful documentary reminds us that seemingly powerless individuals on every continent have the power to change the course of history. Especially children. Especially smart Indian children. Climate of Change is the most hopeful film we’ve seen about a situation that often seems hopeless.
CLIMATE STRIKE WEEK at MICHAELKONIK.com, 9/15-21 Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, explains how our brains abandon us when the fate of the planet is at stake: He says that no one seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won’t involve villains with...
Global warming is not a speculative theory. It’s a proven syndrome, despite what so-called “skeptics” (read: those with financial interests in carbon dioxide producing industries) claim. Former vice-president of the United States, and possibly the rightfully elected president in 2000, Al Gore, has toured the world for years giving a power-point slide show that cogently...
A gallon of self-serve unleaded regular gasoline in Los Angeles costs an average of $3.20. In a weird, painful way, the high cost is a blessing, because (theoretically) it reduces demand, and when we drive our automobiles less we pollute our environment less. Our new Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, declared last month in his State of...
Depending on one’s quotient of Puritanical self-abnegation, the follies of other less disciplined souls often inspire the pensive equivalent of a scoff. Of the fatty we think, “Surely he knows that a diet of doughnuts and fries will only make him more obese.” Of the smoker we think, “Surely she knows that smoking causes an...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Clarinetist Glenn Dickson, master of klezmer, has made a solo recording, “Wider Than the Sky,” that’s been on perpetual repeat at our home office. Using over-dubs and electronic digital effects, Dickson fills the aural soundscape with a rich melange of chordal textures supporting the melody. His celebrated virtuosity is subsumed here to long, elegiac musical...
