We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Toxic algae bloom shuts down West Coast fisheries

Click here to access article by Joseph Serna from Los Angeles Times

I am totally amazed by the lack of coverage of this event from local mainstream media. I have perused a number of websites for coverage and I've noticed some major patterns. Website from publications on the West coast of the US are giving minimum coverage, and the coverage they do provide are in brief articles with human scale photos missing. Instead what photos they do show are the effects on marine life as in this article, microscopic pictures of algae, high level photos, or rather irrelevant photos of crab pots. The best photo coverage is from locations far away like this photo taken in Oregon from a Florida website, or this one from a Dubai website.

I can only speculate that media directors in the highly concentrated major media corporations do not want to adversely affect tourism along the coast this summer and/or that they do not want people to connect this increasing phenomenon with global warming.