It just amazes me how some greens continue to entertain the notion that authoritarianism might be better for the future of humanity than democracy. Two years removed from a historic election, in which a black man was elected president of the world’s longest-lasting democratic government, try wrapping your mind around this question posed at Grist:…Continue Reading…
I don’t get George Monbiot’s problem with this list of 20 “Green Giants” singled out by the Guardian’s Sunday Observer. Are such lists arbitrary and pure fluff? Sure. But Monbiot’s beef goes way beyond that: Much of the list was a catalogue of rich and powerful people who have now added green ““ or some…Continue Reading…
I’ve been having a little fun with Jeff Id’s freaky freakouts about the leftist/socialist/Marxist plot take over Western civilization. Over at Lucia’s, I’ve wondered why none of his fellow travelers in the skeptic sphere ever ask him to dial down his paranoid rants against Democrats and environmentalists. I never got an answer, which I suppose…Continue Reading…
The battle (over global warming) between competing conservative evangelical camps is one to watch in 2011. It’s been brewing for years. In 2005, Richard Cizik, who was then the political lobbyist for the conservative-leaning National Association of Evangelicals, and talking up the notion of environmental stewardship to its 30 million members, found himself in the…Continue Reading…
One of my favorite geographers, David Lowenthal, has written two great books that touch on the power of nostalgia: The Past is a foreign Country, and Possessed by the Past. In environmentalism, the notion of an idealized past has long manifested itself in various ways. For example an early strain of contemporary environmentalism–known as the…Continue Reading…
There’s a passage in Ross Douthat’s NYT column today that struck me as analogous to the decline of environmentalism. So I made the appropriate word substitutions: Thanks in part to this bunker mentality, American Christianity environmentalism has become what Hunter calls a “weak culture” “” one that mobilizes but doesn’t convert, alienates rather than seduces,…Continue Reading…
One of my favorite new blogs (for me) is Ecological Sociology. Its current post on Stewart Brand’s hypocrisy hits all the right notes. (Monbiot is all over this.) Long story short: In Brand’s book, Whole Earth Discipline, he evidently writes (I haven’t seen the passage myself yet): …In an excess of zeal that [Rachel] Carson…Continue Reading…
Is the American environmental movement all but dead as a meaningful force for change? You have to wonder, after reading this Washington Post story from earlier in the week. Or, as the article suggests, are there larger forces arrayed against Greens, such as the deep economic funk much of America is still trying to shake…Continue Reading…
As a parent of two small children, one who gives me grief if I forget to turn out a light in our apartment, I can relate to the eco-guilt heaped on this Economist blogger: The kids bug me when I drive to the neighbourhood store rather than walking, because it “poisons the atmosphere”. They bug…Continue Reading…
There’s an intriguing, somewhat dispiriting profile by David Owen in the current New Yorker ($ubscription) of an idealistic, enviro-minded inventor who wants to do good in the world, but is having a hard time overcoming the “limits of innovation.” The subject of the piece is Saul Griffith, who as recently as 2004 was a Ph.D….Continue Reading…