I’m a little jaded on the annual Earth Day love-in. If children showed appreciation for their parents only on Mother’s Day or Father’s day, the human race would be screwed. Is it a nice thing that we venerate our parents once a year? Sure. But who are we kidding: many of us approach these hallmark…Continue Reading…
I’m not sure how much you can read into one particular comment thread. But there has been a discernible anti-immigration zealotry expressed by Grist readers over the last week, in response to this post. On the thread, Randy Cunningham pleaded with his fellow greens to be more compassionate. He finally gave up, despairing: Most of…Continue Reading…
Goes to this post at Green Inc. And quoting a well-known American environmentalist, there’s this catch-all reasoning, which only die-hard greens will embrace and which will alienate most everyone else: Overpopulation is the driving force behind virtually all environmental problems “” air pollution, water pollution, the extinction crisis, global warming , yet it is rarely…Continue Reading…
That’s the headline, and this is the best quote: I grew up in the city; I wasn’t a girl scout; I didn’t camp; I wasn’t a skier; I wasn’t an avid hiker””but the environmentalism I came to know was more about the effects of pollution in society. Meet Lisa Jackson, EPA administrator. She says her…Continue Reading…
I kinda knew that Joe Romm wouldn’t find the Super Bowl Audi commercial funny. He’s humor challenged. But David Roberts at Grist? Jesus, can’t you guys just chill and see past your environmentally correct navels for once? Dudes, it was satire! It worked. Hell, I bet Al Gore laughed. If you’ve ever seen him on…Continue Reading…
That’s what Geoffrey Lean suggests is needed to counter what he calls the “swiftboating” of climate science in the wake of Climategate. He argues that “environmentalists must bear a fair share of the responsibility” for the rising number of people who don’t believe in global warming (according to recent polls). He partly blames the “backlash”…Continue Reading…
It’s hell on the planet, sadistic to our fellow creatures, and bad for your health. Nothing in this WaPost essay is new, but the main point is worth pondering: What I eat influences you. What you eat influences me. Our diets are deeply, intimately and necessarily political.
That’s the title of a fantastic piece by Chris Turner in the October issue of The Walrus, a Canadian magazine. He turns the typical environmental tale of crisis on its head, suggesting that, We need a new kind of story, a new template for our ecological philosophy “” one that acknowledges what we have lost…Continue Reading…
Jackson Lears has a must-read essay in the current issue of TNR that leads off: In contemporary public discourse, concern for “the environment” is a mile wide and an inch deep. Even free-market fundamentalists strain to display their ecological credentials, while corporations that sell fossil fuels genuflect at the altar of sustainability. Everyone has discovered…Continue Reading…
Following the logic of that Grist article I cited in my last post, this commentary on the congressional climate bill strikes me as pretty “radical,” coming from a well-respected, mainstream greenie like Bill McKibben: If you pass half a health care bill, you can always come back in a decade. People will suffer in the…Continue Reading…