Thursday, April 10, 2025

PBS Terra asks 'Save the Planet? In THIS Economy? Pffft' for an Earth Month Throwback Thursday

Happy Throwback Thursday! For today's retrospective, I'm finishing the series of Earth Month videos from PBS Terra I featured in For Earth Day, PBS Terra asks 'Stop Saving the Planet?' Change the world instead and today's featured post, PBS Terra explains 'How Big Business Broke Recycling (And Blamed You)' by sharing Save the Planet? In THIS Economy? Pffft.

We often hear industry and political leaders talk about how we need to balance the economy with the environment. The thinking goes something like this: environmental destruction is necessary to earn a living and make the things we need. But is this really true? Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant explores how we can approach the economy and the environment differently.
I begin my reaction by recycling two passages from the first post in the series.
This video reinforces a point I've been making since the first year of the blog and even before that in my environmental science classes: "economy is dependent on society, which is in turn dependent on the environment. Without an environment, there is no society. Without a society, there is no economy."
...
I think the system needs to be reformed; the status quo is unsustainable, while scrapping our food, energy, and economic systems and starting over would be too disruptive.
This video provides an idea of how those reforms could work. It's also one I could show my students. Welcome to blogging as professional development.

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant also pointed out the inequitable distribution of both harms and benefits from economic activity using the example of the port district of Wilmington in Los Angeles, which I can add as an example of environmental racism. What struck me as hard as the life expectancy of residents of the port neighborhoods of San Pedro, Wilmington, and West Long Beach being eight years lower than Los Angeles County as a whole is that more people died from air pollution in L.A. County than from traffic accidents and crime combined. Yikes! Am I glad I moved out of there!

Follow over the jump for how today's top post earned its page views.


PBS Terra explains 'How Big Business Broke Recycling (And Blamed You)' from April 27, 2024 earned its page views in two pulses. First, Infidel753 shared the link at his blog during April 2023, helping it earn 156 default and 178 raw page views, which ranked the entry eleventh by default page views, eighth by raw page views among entries posted that month, and twelfth overall for April. Then I shared the liink at the Coffee Party USA/Citizen Connect Facebook page early in May, earning an additional 114 default and 148 raw page views to rank 20th by the first measure and tie for 17th that month. Those combined for 292 default and 326 raw page views over two months. The entry attracted readers through the end of the blogging year, tallying 403 raw page views by March 20, 2025, ranking it 35th among entries posted last year and 39th overall.

That concludes today's short retrospective. Stay tuned for a longer one on Flashback Friday.

Previous posts in this series
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