The Environmentalist
Encyclopedia
The Environmentalist is a public interest, eco-investigative journalism site that reports on the geopolitics and science of climate change, general politics, sustainable living, business impact and the history of affected regions.
; author of the REAL McCAIN Cliff Schecter
; filmmaker Greg Reitman
, producer of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival
award winning documentary, Fields of Fuel; Democratic Activist Terry Leach; as well as scientists, environmental lawyers and various guest contributors.
Founding Publisher and Managing Editor, Janet Ritz, is the daughter of award winning Associated Press
courtroom artist and journalist
, Rosalie Ritz
. An environmental activist and writer who was mentored in her youth by writer and composer Joaquin Nin-Culmell
, concert promoter Bill Graham
and artist Zahara Schatz
, Janet Ritz founded The Environmentalist in 2006 as a forum for unfiltered climate science information after learning from colleagues about the editing of James E. Hansen's climate science reports by the Bush administration.
In August, 2007, Ritz wrote an article for the Huffington Post: NASA's Climate Change Satellites: White House Cuts Leaked, which reported cuts in climate science satellites that were concurrent with a declaration by the Bush Administration to become more involved in fighting global warming
. This led to an expansion of The Environmentalist's format to include topics beyond the environment. In January, 2008, The Environmentalist began to be picked up by wire services. In April, 2008, the editorial page was launched when Ritz published a tribute to her late mother's work on both The Huffington Post and The Environmentalist. World news, history and resource pages followed soon after.
A public interest site, The Environmentalist, is published under a Creative Commons
3.0 License with many of its articles carried by various online wire services, including Reuters
, Chicago Sun-Times
, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Fox News, IBS
and USA Today
.
In August, 2008, The Environmentalist published filmmaker Greg Reitman
's personal account, A Filmmaker's 'Fields of Fuel' of his journey that led to the 2008 Sundance Film Festival
Audience Award winning documentary Fields of Fuel.
In July, 2008, The Environmentalist published an article entitled: James Hansen to the G8: We've passed safe C02 levels which included a letter from Dr. James E. Hansen of NASA
's Goddard Spaces Sciences Institute, in which Hansen warned that the maximum safe level of atmospheric C02
(350 ppm) had been exceeded (385 ppm):
Hansen's letter was addressed to Prime Minister
Yasuo Fukuda
of Japan
, host of the 2008 G8 Summit. He requested Fukuda's leadership in addressing the findings.
In May, 2008, an article by contributing writer, Terry Leach, entitled: Hillary Clinton's ‘Victory’ in Pennsylvania: The Rush Limbaugh Effect and subsequently picked up by Reuters, The Huffington Post, and The Chicago Sun-Times, posited that the votes for Hillary Clinton cast during the Pennsylvania Primary should be explored to assess the impact by Rush Limbaugh
's Operation Chaos
. This resulted in the phrase "The Limbaugh Effect" being used across the media sphere, which earned a response from Rush Limbaugh that was answered by The Environmentalist's managing editor in an article entitled: Why Rush Limbaugh Thinks This Site is Unfriendly.
Top published The Environmentalist articles include:
More Published articles are listed on the Archives page.
for President of the United States, citing his environmental policy positions as the reason for choosing him over the other candidates.
On January 31, 2008, Managing Editor, Janet Ritz, writing outside the environmentalism genre, reviewed and endorsed, a new release, Crossing the Line, by Ryko Recording Artist, Bill Cutler, an album that included deceased Grateful Dead lead guitarist, Jerry Garcia
, among other surviving notables of the last three decades, many of whom had endorsed Senator Obama.
Founding
Founded in November, 2006, The Environmentalist's writers include Huffington Post environmental and geopolitical contributor, Janet Ritz; Presidential Climate Action Plan (PCAP) Executive Director, William S. Becker; award winning playwright and author, Sherman YellenSherman Yellen
Sherman Yellen is a playwright and screenwriter.- Biography :Sherman Yellen was born in 1932 to Nathan and Lillian Yellen. He attended the High School of Music & Art in Harlem and graduated from Bard College on the Hudson in 1953 where he met his future wife, Joan Fuhr...
; author of the REAL McCAIN Cliff Schecter
The Real McCain
The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn't by Cliff Schecter is a 2008 book that analyzes the political transformation of Senator John McCain...
; filmmaker Greg Reitman
Greg Reitman
Greg Reitman is a professional speaker, author , activist filmmaker and film producer/director from Los Angeles, California, and the founder of Blue Water Entertainment, Inc...
, producer of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival
2008 Sundance Film Festival
The 2008 Sundance Film Festival ran from January 17, 2008 to January 27 in Park City, Utah. It was the 24th iteration of the Sundance Film Festival. The opening night film was In Bruges and the closing night film was CSNY Déjà Vu.-Films:...
award winning documentary, Fields of Fuel; Democratic Activist Terry Leach; as well as scientists, environmental lawyers and various guest contributors.
Founding Publisher and Managing Editor, Janet Ritz, is the daughter of award winning Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
courtroom artist and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, Rosalie Ritz
Rosalie Ritz
Rosalie Ritz was an award-winning journalist and courtroom artist who covered major United States trials in the 1960s through the 1990s...
. An environmental activist and writer who was mentored in her youth by writer and composer Joaquin Nin-Culmell
Joaquin Nin-Culmell
Joaquín Maria Nin-Culmell was Cuban-Spanish composer and an internationally known concert pianist, emeritus professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley.-Early life:...
, concert promoter Bill Graham
Bill Graham (promoter)
Bill Graham was an American impresario and rock concert promoter from the 1960s until his death.-Early life:...
and artist Zahara Schatz
Zahara Schatz
Zahara Schatz , was an Israeli fine and decorative artist and daughter of Boris Schatz, who founded the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, as it is known today, in Jerusalem.-Biography:...
, Janet Ritz founded The Environmentalist in 2006 as a forum for unfiltered climate science information after learning from colleagues about the editing of James E. Hansen's climate science reports by the Bush administration.
In August, 2007, Ritz wrote an article for the Huffington Post: NASA's Climate Change Satellites: White House Cuts Leaked, which reported cuts in climate science satellites that were concurrent with a declaration by the Bush Administration to become more involved in fighting global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
. This led to an expansion of The Environmentalist's format to include topics beyond the environment. In January, 2008, The Environmentalist began to be picked up by wire services. In April, 2008, the editorial page was launched when Ritz published a tribute to her late mother's work on both The Huffington Post and The Environmentalist. World news, history and resource pages followed soon after.
Format
The Environmentalist displays articles under the following sections (verticals): Home, Politics, Climate, World, Science, History, Business, Resources, Editorial, Lifestyle, Eco-Links, Tags and Archive. The articles are noted for their use of illustrations, photographs, charts and diagrams to clarify article points and conclusions.A public interest site, The Environmentalist, is published under a Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
3.0 License with many of its articles carried by various online wire services, including Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
, Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Fox News, IBS
Internet Broadcasting
Internet Broadcasting , or IB, is a provider of Websites, content and advertising revenue solution to the largest and most successful media companies in the world. IB hosts over 70 local stations' sites, and co-produced NBCOlympics.com for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece and the 2006...
and USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
.
Notable articles
In November, 2008, The Environmentalist published an editorial by PCAP Executive Director, Bill Becker, entitled Struggling for Obama's Soul that followed a review of Becker's book, The 100 Day Action Plan to Save the Planet summarizing the Presidential Climate Action Plan developed for the incoming administration.In August, 2008, The Environmentalist published filmmaker Greg Reitman
Greg Reitman
Greg Reitman is a professional speaker, author , activist filmmaker and film producer/director from Los Angeles, California, and the founder of Blue Water Entertainment, Inc...
's personal account, A Filmmaker's 'Fields of Fuel' of his journey that led to the 2008 Sundance Film Festival
2008 Sundance Film Festival
The 2008 Sundance Film Festival ran from January 17, 2008 to January 27 in Park City, Utah. It was the 24th iteration of the Sundance Film Festival. The opening night film was In Bruges and the closing night film was CSNY Déjà Vu.-Films:...
Audience Award winning documentary Fields of Fuel.
In July, 2008, The Environmentalist published an article entitled: James Hansen to the G8: We've passed safe C02 levels which included a letter from Dr. James E. Hansen of NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
's Goddard Spaces Sciences Institute, in which Hansen warned that the maximum safe level of atmospheric C02
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...
(350 ppm) had been exceeded (385 ppm):
"My address tomorrow to the United Nations University G8 Symposium summarizes scientific data revealing that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million), and is likely less than that. Implications for energy policy are profound, as atmospheric CO2 is already 385 ppm."
Hansen's letter was addressed to Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
Yasuo Fukuda
Yasuo Fukuda
was the 91st Prime Minister of Japan, serving from 2007 to 2008. He was previously the longest-serving Chief Cabinet Secretary in Japanese history, serving for three and a half years under Prime Ministers Yoshirō Mori and Junichiro Koizumi....
of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, host of the 2008 G8 Summit. He requested Fukuda's leadership in addressing the findings.
In May, 2008, an article by contributing writer, Terry Leach, entitled: Hillary Clinton's ‘Victory’ in Pennsylvania: The Rush Limbaugh Effect and subsequently picked up by Reuters, The Huffington Post, and The Chicago Sun-Times, posited that the votes for Hillary Clinton cast during the Pennsylvania Primary should be explored to assess the impact by Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III is an American radio talk show host, conservative political commentator, and an opinion leader in American conservatism. He hosts The Rush Limbaugh Show which is aired throughout the U.S. on Premiere Radio Networks and is the highest-rated talk-radio program in the United...
's Operation Chaos
Operation CHAOS
]Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was the code name for a domestic espionage project conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency. A department within the CIA was established in 1967 on orders from President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson and later expanded under President Richard Nixon...
. This resulted in the phrase "The Limbaugh Effect" being used across the media sphere, which earned a response from Rush Limbaugh that was answered by The Environmentalist's managing editor in an article entitled: Why Rush Limbaugh Thinks This Site is Unfriendly.
Top published The Environmentalist articles include:
- Deniability: Facing the War on Terror Through Poetry
- James Hansen to the G8: We've passed safe C02 levels
- A Filmmaker's 'Fields of Fuel'
- Struggling for Obama's Soul
- The 100 Day Action Plan to Save the Planet
- A Letter to Two Wives
- McCain's Murderers Row
- A New Climate Reality
- Honeybees at unsustainable levels: over one-third gone
- Cats lower heat attack risk
- Zoroastrianism's Influence
- Who are the Kurds?
- Carnegie Study: Climate Requires Near-zero Emissions
- President Bush Intervenes on EPA Smog Ruling
- Harvard Study: Germs in soil thrive on antibiotics
- U.S. Floods a Sign of Things to Come
- Speech Shakes Up Paris Climate Talks
- China quake may reduce vital carbon offsets
- Congress to drill for answers on oil prices
- Lights at Night Linked to Breast Cancer
- The Plight of the Bumblebee
- Congress grills Big Oil on prices
- Giant Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapses
More Published articles are listed on the Archives page.
Article submission
In addition to their regular writers, The Environmentalist allows query submission by guest contributors. Interested writers submit a short synopsis through the site's contact page, along with their qualifications and reasons for writing.Endorsements
On February 4, 2008, The Environmentalist endorsed Senator Barack ObamaBarack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
for President of the United States, citing his environmental policy positions as the reason for choosing him over the other candidates.
On January 31, 2008, Managing Editor, Janet Ritz, writing outside the environmentalism genre, reviewed and endorsed, a new release, Crossing the Line, by Ryko Recording Artist, Bill Cutler, an album that included deceased Grateful Dead lead guitarist, Jerry Garcia
Jerry Garcia
Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...
, among other surviving notables of the last three decades, many of whom had endorsed Senator Obama.
See also
- Bill GrahamBill Graham (promoter)Bill Graham was an American impresario and rock concert promoter from the 1960s until his death.-Early life:...
- James HansenJames HansenJames E. Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He has held this position since 1981...
- Joaquin Nin-CulmellJoaquin Nin-CulmellJoaquín Maria Nin-Culmell was Cuban-Spanish composer and an internationally known concert pianist, emeritus professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley.-Early life:...
- The Real McCainThe Real McCainThe Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn't by Cliff Schecter is a 2008 book that analyzes the political transformation of Senator John McCain...
- Greg ReitmanGreg ReitmanGreg Reitman is a professional speaker, author , activist filmmaker and film producer/director from Los Angeles, California, and the founder of Blue Water Entertainment, Inc...
- Rosalie RitzRosalie RitzRosalie Ritz was an award-winning journalist and courtroom artist who covered major United States trials in the 1960s through the 1990s...
- Zahara SchatzZahara SchatzZahara Schatz , was an Israeli fine and decorative artist and daughter of Boris Schatz, who founded the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, as it is known today, in Jerusalem.-Biography:...
- Sherman YellenSherman YellenSherman Yellen is a playwright and screenwriter.- Biography :Sherman Yellen was born in 1932 to Nathan and Lillian Yellen. He attended the High School of Music & Art in Harlem and graduated from Bard College on the Hudson in 1953 where he met his future wife, Joan Fuhr...
- George WitteGeorge WitteGeorge Witte, an American poet from Madison, New Jersey, is the author of Deniability: Poems and The Apparitioners: Poems.-Career:George Witte is the author of two books of poetry: Deniability: Poems, published by Orchises Press in 2009, and The Apparitioners: Poems, published by Three Rail Press...