May 2012
2 posts
Human Health? Why Worry? Its the Economy, Stupid. →
Helen Thompson writes in Nature about the lack of scientific study of the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on human health. What do those undisclosed chemicals being pumped into the ground mean for people drinking from nearby water sources? What about all that brine and those radioactive elements that are pushed up to the surface and stored in open, above-ground reservoirs? And how about that...
... in which I'm profiled by the Earth Institute. →
Last autumn the Earth Institute provided me with a travel grant to report on the drought and wildfires in Texas. In a profile that appears today on their website I discuss that trip and environmental reporting.
April 2012
1 post
Cha. Cha. Cha. Changes.
I’m in the final two weeks of studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where I’ve been participating in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Program in Health and Science Journalism. I’ve been fortunate to receive two fellowships that will keep me busy after I’m finished the program and up to the end of 2012.
During the first week of June,...
March 2012
1 post
The Baffler #19 →
The Baffler has re-launched with many great authors such as Rick Perlstein, David Graeber, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Thomas Frank contributing. Check out my article — “Revolt of the Gadgets” — in which I examine the roll of Egypt’s working class in the ongoing uprising and critique the stupid things American pundits say about technology and revolutions. Its a pricey...
August 2011
1 post
Tahrir Square Sit-in Cleared by Military
Hundreds of military and Central Security Forces personnel evicted today the remaining protesters from Cairo’s Tahrir Square, which has been occupied for nearly a month. The sweep comes two days before the trials begin for former President Hosni Mubarak, his two sons, and former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly. Mubarak and al-Adly are charged with the killings of an estimated 840 protesters...
July 2011
11 posts
Friday of Shari'a
Ignore the media reports of the “Friday of Unity and the People’s Will.” It is the Friday of Shari’a.
Tahrir Square was packed today. But rather than being filled by a broad spectrum of nationalists, secularists, Islamists, and trade unionists — you name it — today the square is dominated by Salafists.
Egyptian flags remain aloft but in much smaller numbers...
Smoke and Mirrors in Pursuit of Suez’s Striking...
The Brooklyn Rail
July 25, 20011
My visit to Suez, where I planned to interview striking Suez Canal workers, began as expected: One of the workers slipped me a USB drive of video footage taken the night before of protesters clashing with the military; two cops rolled up, radiating good cheer, and asked what me and my three colleagues were doing in Suez, while a company security flack confiscated...
Beginning of the End for Egypt's Occupations?
Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces escalated over the weekend its antagonism toward the protest movements that since early July have occupied city squares in Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez.
On Friday evening the military dispersed a blockade in Alexandria, firing warning shots into the air and beating back stone throwing protesters. When news reached Cairo, outraged protesters...
After the Revolution: Five months after the...
The American Prospect
July 12, 2011
Cairo, Egypt—Five months ago, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced from power following 18 days of nationwide protest that claimed the lives of more than 800 Egyptians.
“Hold your head high; you’re Egyptian,” protesters chanted in the streets after Vice President Omar Suleiman announced Mubarak’s resignation. In the Middle East’s most populous...
The Revolution First - A dispatch from Tahrir
Ahaab Mohammad has something to say. A pharmacist from Cairo, he interrupts the conversation that I’ve just begun with a friend from the U.S. to explain the importance of today’s protest in Tahrir Square, how vital it is for achieving the unfulfilled demands of the Egyptian uprising.
I’m told this is a common, albeit recent, phenomenon. The frustrated political critiques and...
... of Victories and Consequences
Dear Brother:
I write these few lines to let you know we’re doing well, on the whole, though it varies from day to day: sometimes the wind changes, it rains lead, life bleeds from every pore. To tell the truth, I’m not quite sure where we stand; when you’re up to your neck in war, you can’t tell till the end whether to celebrate or mourn. And there it is, the crucial question: whether to follow or...
Did the Egyptian Revolution Go Wrong? By Alaa...
[Ed: This editorial by Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswany was published on June 5th, 2011 by al-Masry al-Youm. It has been translated from the Arabic original by Noha Radwan. In it al-Aswany highlights the ways in which the aspirations of the January uprising that toppled Husni Mubarak are far from being achieved and that protests scheduled for Friday are intended to set the country back on its...
Ismailiyya Canal Workers Demand Better Pay, Better...
I visited yesterday striking workers from the Timsaah Canal Company in Ismailiyya. The trip was part of a reporting project on the Egyptian working class that I’ve been doing since arriving two weeks ago.
By the time I arrived in the late morning, a hundred picketers had already been out in the streets since six a.m., occupying a traffic circle just outside of the city center. Charred logs sat...
The People Demand ... the Execution of the Former...
Several thousand protesters rallied this afternoon in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, marching past several government ministries and returning to Tahrir without clashing with police.
The demonstration was meant to send a message to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that the continued brutality meted out by the police and military must be put to an end by the caretaker government and that...
June 2011
4 posts
Renewed Violence hits Cairo's Tahrir Square
Major clashes broke out late last evening in Tahrir Square following several arrests and the beating of relatives of protesters killed during the January and February uprising that led to the ouster of Egyptian President Husni Mubarak.
These clashes signify a major escalation in the confrontation between Egyptians, who are growing tired at the slow pace of political reform and the prosecution of...
... You say you want a con-sti-tu-tion.
A new poll released by the International Peace Institute sheds some light on the pulse of the public in Egypt.
What caught my attention was that concerns about the economy are growing as those of “democracy” are declining.
The verdict is — at least with this poll, but there have been others (see here and here) — what good are liberal notions of free speech, electoral...
Egypt: An Opening
I arrived yesterday in Egypt, where I’ll be (thanks to a international reporting fellowship from Columbia University) for the next two months, studying Arabic several days a week and reporting on others.
While I’m here, I’ll do my best to post to this website frequent round-ups of news from the Egyptian and regional press; analysis of political and social issues; interviews with...
The Invention of Lying: Why do conservatives hate...
June 3, 2011 - The American Prospect
Despite this spring’s ferocious weather, which scientists warn could become more commonplace as the planet warms, climate change denial is en vogue, particularly among congressional Republicans. They claim the science is unsettled, and seek deep cuts in programs that would research and prepare for climate-change.
The GOP’s current attacks on...
May 2011
1 post
Chicago Protest Ups the Ante in Fight Against Big...
May 25, 2011 - The Nation
Kelly Mitchell’s adrenaline surged as she began her ascent up the 450-foot smoke stack at the Fisk coal-fired power plant in Chicago. Wearing a tight-fitting safety harness and loaded down with industrial climbing gear, Mitchell, along with seven other activists from Greenpeace, scaled the stack at the break of dawn on Tuesday in order to paint “Quit Coal”...
April 2011
2 posts
REDD Alert: Is Indonesia's program to stop...
Back in December, I wrote an article for Mother Jones about Indonesia’s efforts to reduce its levels of deforestation and, by extension, its greenhouse gas emissions, which are the third highest in the world, trailing only the U.S. and China. This endeavor is part of a U.N. scheme called REDD — Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation — that aims to funnel billions...
Pennsylvania's GOP Governor Lets Gas Industry Have...
Published at The Nation
Robert S. Eshelman | April 19, 2011
Situated amidst the bucolic forests and Appalachian peaks of southwestern Pennsylvania, Ohiopyle State Park offers one of the best settings for outdoor recreation in the country. One and half million people visit the park each year to hike, hunt and fish, kayak, and contribute millions of dollars to the regional economy.
By...
December 2010
1 post
Indonesia's Billion-Dollar Climate Experiment: Can...
(Originally published at Mother Jones)
— David Gilbert/Rainforest Action Network
On a humid afternoon in Sungai Tohor, a coastal village in Sumatra’s Riau province, 50 or so men are packed into a town-hall conference room. They sit in neat rows of blue plastic chairs, many clad in knee-high rubber boots, loose-fitting polo shirts, and baggy pants—the casual uniform of an...
September 2010
2 posts
Kochtopus Hits New York and California →
Firedoglake Book Salon chat with Douglas... →
Solve Climate - In Landmark Case, Obama Sides with... →
August 2010
2 posts
Solve Climate - Banks Toughen Lending Rules to... →
June 2010
4 posts
Move quickly, move quietly
Our trip up the Kampar River began ominously enough.
“When we stop, don’t get out of the car,” said Indra, our translator. “Remain inside.”
We left our Pekanbaru hotel at 5:30 am, driving an hour and a half to this riverside spot, where we were now parked. The early morning sun began to emerge in the east over the tops of far off trees. We waited, behind tinted SUV windows, for the speedboats to...
Welcome to the Jungle
Another day. Another day of travel. An hour flight from Jakarta to Pekanbaru, Riau.
One person in the group I’m traveling with reckons that this plane – a Lion Air Boeing something or other – has twenty additional rows than an identical plane owned by a European or American company. Indeed, the crush of people boarding the plane has the feel of a crowded dance floor, or a run on a fire exit at a...
Bright Lights, Big Trees.
I hate flying, especially for twenty hours, as is the case when travelling by plane from New York City to Jakarta. Not only did I have to contend with my usual sweaty palms and stiff knees but also a few bumps and twists while traveling through some storm clouds that were coasting over the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. The rain falling from these same clouds has been responsible for...
WE AIN’T SEEN NOTHING YET: Gwynne Dyer, In... →
May 2010
1 post
From Cochabamba to Cancun
My conversation with Tina Gerhardt about the climate justice movement, published by Where We Are Now.
Robert S. Eshelman: We both just returned from the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which took place just outside of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Explain what took place there and describe what your impressions of the conference were.
Tina Gerhardt: The World...
April 2010
3 posts
Bolivian Climate Conference Dispatches
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-s-eshelman/world-peoples-conference_b_543211.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-s-eshelman/bolivian-government-outli_b_545411.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-s-eshelman/from-cochabamba-to-cancun_b_557293.html
Cracking Big Coal
the Nation
By Robert S. Eshelman
Scott Parkin, an organizer at the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network (RAN), is a straight-talking, get-things-done kind of guy, more at ease toiling behind the scenes in environmental struggles than serving as a personification of them. Yet in his fight against the coal industry he has embodied the qualities that define a new-model environmental...
A climate change conference. Then another. Then...
Just when articles and editorials parsing the fallout of the Copenhagen climate conference neared zero, a new round of international negotiations is now underway with not one, not two, but four international meetings on climate change occurring in April.
This past week, the UNFCCC held is first post-Copenhagen meeting in Bonn, Germany. NRDC’s Jack Schmidt, blogging from the conference, says that...
March 2010
4 posts
Texas Board of Ed. and Capitalist Pigs
This past Friday, the Texas Board of Education gave preliminary approval to a sweeping, conservative-led rewrite of the state’s school curriculum, eliminating sound social science and humanities teaching and including Christian conservative notions of history, economics and sociology. Included in the 120-page curriculum standards are the removal of mention of the separation of church and state in...
Pricing Carbon
Obama met early this week with several Senators who are leading negotiations over a climate change … I mean, clean energy and jobs bill. Although details continue to be hashed out, what seems clear at this point is that whatever legislation emerges from these negotiations will not include a comprehensive cap-and-trade regiment similar to that included in the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House...
Interview with Mark Lynas
Mark Lynas serves as advisor on climate change to the President of the Maldives and is a visiting researcher at Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment. He has written several books on climate change and is a frequent contributor the Guardian and Independent. I spoke with him about the recent attacks on climate science and the state of climate negotiations in the U.S. and...
UNFCCC's Yvo de Boer on Spanking
Just wrapping up several days of reporting from Point Carbon’s seventh annual Carbon Market Insights conference in Amsterdam, spending several afternoons in close quarters with carbon speculators, financiers, and UN regulators.
Yvo de Boer, the easily-quotable, outgoing head of the UNFCCC, participated in a Wednesday morning panel discussion on the state of international climate policy....