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Conservo-pundit Jonah Goldberg reveals the right’s lazy misunderstandings of enviro issues

Smirky columnist Jonah Goldberg's latest column in National Review Online is virtually worthless as a source of information, but it does provide good insight into the relationship of the modern conservative punditariat to the environment and the environmental movement. In the end, they feel obliged to say they care about the environment, but it doesn't particularly interest them, and as long as someone, anyone will reassure them that everything is peachy, that's enough. And of course, if there's one thing modern conservatives have in spades, it is an embarrassment of media sources devoted to telling them what they want to hear.

Goldberg uses the occasion of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment to riff on what is the core modern conservative position on the environment, namely: The rest of the world is polluted, because they are poor and socialist, but the U.S. and Europe are doing just fine, because they are rich and capitalist. There's a germ of truth in this, of course, but what Goldberg is utterly insensate toward is the basic fact that pollution, global warming, and overfishing do not respect national borders. Wait, he believes in that stuff, right?

And let's be fair, unlike the situation in America and Europe, there are some enormous environmental problems in the world. Even if you're a global-warming skeptic, there's no disputing that such problems as overfishing are real.

Sigh.

More slogging under the break.

Ballast Off

Judge rules EPA must regulate ballast water, control invasive species In a court decision called “a slam dunk for healthy oceans” by the Ocean Conservancy’s Sarah Newkirk, a federal judge ruled last week that the U.S. EPA must regulate ballast water carried by ships entering U.S. waters. The ruling reverses the agency’s exemption of ballast […]

Easy Encomium, Easy Go

EPA earns enviro praise by updating cancer guidelines to protect kids Here’s a rarity: Enviros actually praised a Bush administration move last week. The U.S. EPA earned the plaudits by announcing that it will update its nearly 20-year-old chemical-assessment approach for evaluating potential human carcinogens, to account for differences between adults and children and between […]

Umbra on getting up to speed on enviro issues

Dear Umbra, I am new to the environmental movement, and I was wondering how you keep track of the major issues within it, because there are so many! Also, do you have any books to recommend on the history of the environmental movement? NaomiVictoria, British Columbia, Canada Dearest Naomi, Grist, of course! In addition to […]

Norris McDonald, president of the African American Environmentalist Association, answers questionsNo

Norris McDonald. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I’m president of the African American Environmentalist Association. What does your organization do? What, in a perfect world, would constitute “mission accomplished”? The African American Environmentalist Association, founded in 1985, is one of the nation’s oldest African American-led environmental organizations. We are dedicated to protecting the […]

Talking better is great, but doing things differently is more important

It's not hard to understand why framing has taken on such totemic significance among progressives. Where the modern right sees itself involved in a knife fight -- the goal is winning -- progressives tend to be enamored of process and analysis and reasoned argument. They want to persuade. This is, perhaps more than any other single reason, why they keep getting their asses kicked.

Framing has taken particular hold of the progressive blogosphere, which is chock full of logophiles, people who love, above all else, words.

George Lakoff is not the solution to our problems

I keep thinking I'm done talking about framing (done framing framing?), but like the man said, just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

More below the fold, for those who are not sick of the subject.

The seal massacre, in its full gory

I'm an environmentalist, not an animal-rights activist. Sometimes the two labels go hand-in-hand; sometimes they clash. Personally, I place a priority on healthy ecosystems (including the survival of whole species in their native habitat) over an individual animal's right to exist no matter where it may find itself.

So from that vantage point, the fracas over Canada's annual seal hunt doesn't seem to me to be an "environmental" issue, if we're pigeonholing. Seals, as I understand it, are not endangered.

But, trust me, you don't have to attach any activist label to yourself at all to be revolted and horror-struck by the hunt. The International Fund for Animal Welfare is posting new video footage daily of the mass killing -- and, despite the fact that some of it is set to cheesy, melodramatic music, the images of young seals being bludgeoned and skinned are stomach-churning and heart-breaking. And infuriating. Steel yourself and take a look. "Highlights from 2004 hunt" (shouldn't that be lowlights?), which you can access after registering, are particularly gruesome and illustrative.

As The Guardian notes, this year's particularly large hunt is being justified in part by the claim that seals are eating too many fish, wholly ignoring the fact that the Canadian government has long sanctioned unsustainable fishing practices. Yet another example of humans pushing a species to the brink, then using its scarcity as an excuse to massacre its natural predators. That's a fucked-up cycle.

InterActivist Robyn Griggs Lawrence asks readers for input on green certification issues

Robyn Griggs Lawrence, editor in chief of Natural Home & Garden magazine, answers reader questions about her magazine, the wabi-sabi movement, and getting rid of elder box bugs in InterActivist today. She answers a question about user-friendly labels evaluating the environmental impacts of products and brings up the issue of cost for many small companies:

Q: Are you supportive of the concept of developing scientifically robust yet user-friendly expanded labels evaluating the environmental impacts of products? Ideally, this "label" would provide us with a "thin slice" of summary information on the product's lifecycle to make it easy and quick to use. -- Deborah Dunning, president, International Design Center for the Environment, Chapel Hill, N.C.

A: I think this would be fantastic! I love that we're seeing more green certification -- in everything from forest products to fish. Most of our readers say they do want to be better informed about life-cycle issues and manufacturing processes, but they don't have the time or the resources to investigate every single one. I like to think that the transparency such a label would create could make a big difference in how a lot of products are made -- and disposed of. (Campaigns like the recent "Green the iPod" from The Green Guide -- calling for the iPod to be fitted for an easily replaced and recyclable, toxic-free battery -- are great for making people aware of the full life-cycle consequences of ubiquitous products that they might not think about.) The challenge, as you know, is to make green labels and certification affordable for smaller companies. I'd love to know your thoughts on how to address that sticky issue.

Luckily we have just such a place for readers to discuss green issues! Let us know what you think.

Eco-April Fool’s from around the web

It's April Fools Day, as Daily Grist readers are no doubt discovering right about now. Other examples of the grand tradition of April Fooling can be found on RealClimate and Energy Priorities. Readers: you have any other good examples? Leave them in comments.

(Oh, this is funny too, though not April Foolsy -- I meant to blog about it a long time ago and forgot -- thanks to Jeff for reminding me.)