This is a priceless post that suggests Grist editors are not reading what goes up on the site, much less editing any of it. Just for kicks, I’m gonna break down the first three graphs: So, the world did not end on Saturday. Harold Camping’s predicted Judgment Day and “Rapture” failed. I wonder how disappointed his…Continue Reading…
In 1995, Cornell’s David Price published an essay in the journal Population and Environment, in which he wrote that the exhaustion of fossil fuels, which supply three quarters of this energy, is not far off, and no other energy source is abundant and cheap enough to take their place. A collapse of the earth’s human…Continue Reading…
Over at Climate Central, I lament the shallowness of popular environmentalism (as it exists today), and wonder if their are lessons to be drawn from a recent climate skeptic’s conversion.
I’m poaching this comment from yesterday’s Dot Earth post on Randy Olson. What’s striking to me is that it comes from a graduate student enrolled in a sustainability program at a top university: I love the ‘woe is me’ and ‘shame on you’ summation. It perfectly characterizes the scope of most environmental communication. The hysterical…Continue Reading…
In between pool volleyball and the Electric Slide, I’m sure the conference attendees on this floating temple to humanity’s excessive indulgences will be hard at work finding ways to be more consumptive in a more sustainable manner. I’m certain that something good will come out of the event, because Chip Giller, Grist’s founder, will be there,…Continue Reading…
Well, not exactly, but it seems that German greens have matured into a potent political force. I do think this Foreign Policy piece hypes their ascendancy, but there’s no denying that greens have long been players in German politics in a way that is unimaginable in the U.S. And it appears they are now appealing to a broader swath of the German populace. …Continue Reading…
Is the stale and stagnant environmental movement on the cusp of being transformed by foodies? That’s what Bryan Walsh chews over in this story for Time magazine: Even as traditional environmentalism struggles, another movement is rising in its place, aligning consumers, producers, the media and even politicians. It’s the food movement, and if it continues…Continue Reading…
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…
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…