It’s hard to overstate the legacy of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which was published in June of 1962. Carson’s monumental book drew widespread attention to the overuse of pesticides and their lethal effects on wildlife and the environment. But Silent Spring accomplished much more than that. As Robert Gottlieb observed in his own seminal history on environmentalism, Carson…Continue Reading…
As I mentioned yesterday, I participated in a panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on environmentalism. The event centered on Roger Scruton’s new book, “How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism.” (My fellow panelists included Daniel Sarewitz of Arizona State University and Kenneth Greene, an AEI resident scholar,…Continue Reading…
Last month, in several exchanges that pivoted off this post, Scott Denning, a climate scientist at Colorado State University, observed: There is an inexcusable silence from the political right about how to provide energy for 10 times as many people as we do today (almost all in China and India), without quadrupling CO2 for thousands…Continue Reading…
That’s the title of a new post I have up at Discover magazine’s website. I’m specifically drilling down into the widespread anti-GMO activism/sentiment within the green movement. As I write at Discover: The big story on this front of late has been the planned act of vandalism on the government-funded Rothamsted research station in the UK. Scientists there are…Continue Reading…
I have a confession to make. When I shop at a neighborhood foodie store for some organic staples, I sometimes forget to bring the environmentally correct, reusable grocery bags. It’s deliberate. For one thing, it pisses off my wife, a woman who hordes clothing catalogs the way I once collected comic books, and whose online…Continue Reading…
Some time ago, a mischievous person who works in the environmental/science communication sphere brought something to my attention: Laurie David, the producer of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth documentary, apparently became bored with global warming activism and moved on to a new cause. Nobody says that green activists should remain tethered to one particular issue….Continue Reading…
Some of you may be familiar with Portlandia. If not, here’s how the Oregonian describes the satirical IFC show: It’s a comic portrayal showing a town populated by compulsively organic foodies who interrogate their restaurant server on every detail of the chicken they’re about to order; aggressive bicycle commuters; humorless proprietors of feminist bookstores; and…Continue Reading…
When an institution remains wedded to a bygone era and unresponsive to change, It becomes irrelevant to people’s lives. Like the Catholic church. Many Catholics in the West don’t take the church’s anachronistic doctrine to heart. If they did, 98 percent of Catholic women wouldn’t be using birth control. Now when people criticize the Catholic church,…Continue Reading…
I recently wrote that environmentalism was fading fast as a meaningful movement, and argued that only green modernists could resurrect it. The piece got bounced around a lot on twitter and elicited both praise and barbs. Discover magazine asked if I would do my promised follow-up for them. Here’s a teaser from the opening: If…Continue Reading…
There is a battle underway for the soul of environmentalism. It is a battle between traditionalists and modernists. Who prevails is likely to be determined by whose vision for the future is chosen by a new generation of environmentalists. The green traditionalist has never had a sunny outlook. Forty years ago, he warned about a…Continue Reading…