Month: October 2007

Sacred Africa

This article on the Ethiopian rock-cut churches in Lalibela ran in Budget Travel. It’s archived below.

November 2007
Sacred Africa
Nearly eight centuries ago, 11 churches were carved into the Ethiopian earth. You don’t have to be a believer to be intrigued by their mystery or awed by their majesty.

By Stephan Faris

The pageant overfills the dusty road. Under the hot African sun, a knot of clergy in maroon, peach, and royal blue robes raises parasols and brass crosses. When the parade pauses, a cleric wipes the foreheads of two high priests, wrapped in velvet and balancing replicas of the tablets of Moses on their heads. A loudspeaker pulses a tenor’s chant, and 20 men form two lines for a swaying dance to the jangle of handheld brass rattles.

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Green Peace

This short article, explaining why it was appropriate to award Nobel Peace Prize to people working on climate change, appeared in Slate. It’s archived below.

October 15, 2007
Green Peace
Did Al Gore deserve a Nobel Prize for his work on global warming?

By Stephan Faris

When Al Gore became a Nobel laureate on Friday, it was the second time in four years that the prize for peace had gone green. In 2004, its recipient was Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan politician responsible for planting millions of trees to combat soil erosion. The day after she was recognized, I asked Maathai what reforestation had to do with ending conflict. “What the Nobel committee is doing is going beyond war and looking at what humanity can do to prevent war,” she answered. “Sustainable management of our natural resources will promote peace.”

This year’s award, which Al Gore shared with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, took Maathai’s sentiment to a global scale. “Indications of changes in the earth’s future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness,” said Ole Danbolt Mjøs, the committee chairman. “There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.”

But does global warming really cause war?

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Karl Ammann

I contributed this brief profile of bush-meat activist Karl Ammann for Time’s 100 Heroes of the Environment. It’s archived below.

October 10, 2007
Karl Ammann

By Stephan Faris

Karl Ammann’s photography books are too gruesome for your average coffee table. A hog-tied crocodile strains against its ropes. Charbroiled monkeys, stiff and stacked like cordwood, grimace at the camera. A gorilla’s severed head, propped against a bunch of green bananas, drains slowly into a saucepan.

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