Yahoo! The Kickstarter campaign has closed and The Environment: A True Story is funded. Thanks to everyone who made it happen. I'll keep people posted as the production process unfolds. And if you meant to contribute but didn't get to it, I'm still happy to accept support by cheque or via PayPal; email me for details. But for now, a great big thank you to all our backers. I literally can't do it without you.
It's really exciting that The Environment: A True Story has made its basic funding target on Kickstarter and the project will definitely be going forward. If you've contributed, let me repeat how grateful I am. It's because of you that I'm able to proceed. And I do appreciate how many other worthy demands there are on your resources. If you haven't contributed, let me remind you that anyone who puts in any sum, even just $1 dollar, will be listed in the credits unless they request anonymity. Given the unpleasant rhetoric that accompanies the misleading science of the climate alarmists, it makes a difference to have people stand up against the sneering and be counted on the side of clarity and decency.
Look, if you're in a position to make a substantial contribution I'm keen to have it. We do have a stretch target and all sorts of things we'd like to include in the project if we can fit them into the budget. But regardless, if you want to take a stand, put in a dollar, or two, or ten between now and Sunday at 6 p.m. EDT and I'll be proud to add your name to the nearly 500 people already on the list of backers.
Thanks.
"No one can possibly say where the historian’s work ceases, and the journalist’s begins. The present is continuously in process of becoming the past: the frontier of history ends only with yesterday’s newspaper. A good journalist casts anxious and inquiring glances over his shoulder, and a good historian lifts his eyes from the page to look at the world around him…. Thucydides was writing not merely a history but an anguished record of contemporary events, in which he had acted and suffered…. Walter Raleigh, in his History of the World, was directing a gigantic and angry editorial to the subjects of James I." Paul Johnson The Offshore Islanders
In my latest National Post column I argue, despite generally opposing efforts to remake the world in our image, that in situations as bad as Syria our common humanity obliges us to act.
On the eve of tomorrow's anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge it's good to see so much remembrance including the outstanding front portion of today's National Post. It was a pivotal Allied victory in the First World War partly for strategic reasons, partly for tactical ones and partly for psychological ones given how bleak things looked in the spring of 1917. It wasn't just important for Canada's sense of nationhood. The First World War, for all its horrors, was a necessary struggle for freedom and it was very important that the Allies won even if the victory was in significant measure squandered over the next two decades.
A reminder as the anniversary approaches that my documentary The Great War Remembered, which tries to explain and also to vindicate the war despite everything, is available free on YouTube.
In my latest National Post column I say the U.S. shouldn't succumb to paralysis through pessimistic analysis on North Korea's nuclear program and lunatic regime.