It’s only a matter of time before “America’s fiercest climate change activist blogger” let’s one rip on this essay by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger. Above all, Joe Romm will vehemently object to the essay’s central thesis–that energy policy should be divorced from climate science. Doing this would deprive Romm of his main arsenal, which…Continue Reading…
Over the weekend I attended a large wedding anniversary party in Florida. Lots of smart, successful people in attendance. At one of the tables I was sitting at, a few snow birds were complaining about the unusually cold winter. It sounded as if some pact had been breached. One retiree complained about having to keep…Continue Reading…
It’s the never-ending war on drugs, of course. Steve Chapman at Reason has a nice take: By now, it should be clear that using force to wipe out the drug trade is a task on the order of bailing out the Atlantic Ocean with a teaspoon. Law enforcement can interdict shipments and imprison dealers, but…Continue Reading…
As I noted in this review of Cleo Paskal’s new book, “the northwest passage looms large in geopolitics.” Paskal argues that the the U.S. and European Union are allowing short term economic interests in the Arctic to threaten their long-term security interests. It’s one of the more provocative assertions she makes in Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises…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…
Now this is an interesting new job for the right kind of journalist. The idea behind it is expounded on here at Nieman Journalism Lab. I’ll be curious to see what news the Sense-Making Project will be tracking. Seems like you could do this sort of thing for many kinds of stories that receive sustained…Continue Reading…
I have a guest post up at Nature’s Climate Feedback, titled “Are climate scientists ignoring the lessons of climategate?”
What an irony: In Afghanistan, the U.S. military, in order to achieve a larger strategic victory in Marja, the former Taliban stronghold, is ignoring the vast opium fields in their midst. As this NYT story from yesterday reports: “Marja is a special case right now,” said Cmdr. Jeffrey Eggers, a member of the general’s Strategic…Continue Reading…
There’s a good post up at Grist on the latent anti-immigrant sentiment within the larger environmental community. Anyone who is familiar with the green bigotry on this issue has probably bumped up against what the writer describes here: So after I began working in the environmental community, I was disturbed to find that when friends…Continue Reading…
Last week, there was a horrifying story out of Nigeria, in which the attackers set upon the villagers with machetes, killing women and children in their homes and ensnaring the men who tried to flee in fishnets and animal traps, then massacring them, according to a Nigerian rights group whose investigators went to the area….Continue Reading…