climate change

By Ande Jacobson

I was thinking back to a show years ago when I moved from the pit to the cast as an actor. I wrote about my experience of climbing out of the pit in a commentary piece a few months after the show closed as I prepared to jump back into the pit in another production. Being an actor rather than a musician for that production was memorable in so many ways. Overall it was a good experience to move to a new perspective and role. As I think back on that, one preshow conversation keeps coming to mind in a completely different light than it shed at the time. The theater company that put on the show had a long standing tradition of holding a company call before each performance. It happened after the house was open, the audience was milling about the lobby and the auditorium, and the performers had hopefully completed their final preparations to begin the performance. The entire company was invited to meet just outside of the stage left entrance. Announcements were made. Awards were sometimes given. Hugs were shared. Questions were answered. And it was a pleasant time for the company to come together as a whole before getting to places for curtain. Continue reading →

By Ande Jacobson

To welcome the New Year, 60 Minutes presented a sobering look at the negative impact humankind has had on our planet. Humankind has been too successful as a species. The objective measure of that “success” is that we have grown beyond the bounds of what the earth can support. There are too many people, and according to Dr. Paul Ehrlich, the problem was well in sight many decades ago. In his 1968 book The Population Bomb he put the crisis on food, forecasting that humanity would be unable to feed itself. Instead of working to control our population, we found ways to substantially increase the food supply. Now, while we may be able to produce enough food to feed our ever increasing world population, we cannot create space that doesn’t exist or provide enough fresh water. Through our exponential population growth we’ve encroached on natural habitats worldwide and exacerbated climate change. This combination has created the sixth mass extinction crisis where species the world over are disappearing destroying the ecological balance needed to sustain life, all wrought by too many humans roaming the planet. Continue reading →