Latest Articles

Photos of Iceland reveal a land of extremes

Photos: © Layne Kennedy In case you haven’t heard, we’re giving away a trip to Iceland. As a result, this photo essay is a bit of a divergence from our usual tough-as-nails coverage, wherein the prettiest pictures we run are of, well, politicians. But we’re not just shilling here — Iceland is a hotbed of […]

An interview with New York Times columnist and “geo-green” advocate Thomas Friedman

Thomas Friedman.Photo: Greg MartinAs the green movement fends off accusations of impotence, Thomas Friedman has hatched an idea that could make a man out of environmentalism. In January, the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times debuted his “geo-green” strategy, a powerful proposal for reframing America’s quest for energy independence to appeal to […]

Diamonds Are Forever

Swiss glacier to be wrapped up, saved for later A Swiss ski resort worried about global warming’s ill effects on its future is taking matters into its own mittened hands. At the ski season’s end in May, the Andermatt resort will cover some 32,200 square feet of the Gurschen glacier with an insulating PVC foam […]

Hunting Irony

Alaskan wolves, bears hunted for hunting what the hunters want to hunt These are not the best of times for Alaska’s wolves and bears. A well-studied family of wolves in Denali National Park recently lost two senior females when they wandered outside park borders and were killed by trappers; a similar fate may befall the […]

Better Dead Than Sissy

Declining fuel efficiency of military vehicles puts troops in harm’s way In decades past, fuel comprised about 30 percent of the total supply tonnage moved to and fro on the battlefield. Today, according to a 2001 Defense Science Board study, that number may have risen as high as an astonishing 70 percent. America’s 150,000 soldiers […]

Busy Bee

Environmental series on Hetch Hetchy Valley wins Pulitzer Prize The best opinion writing takes the unthinkable and makes it a live possibility. That’s what Sacramento Bee Associate Editor Tom Philp did with “Hetch Hetchy Reclaimed,” his editorial series on breaching the dam that has held Yosemite National Park’s famed valley under water since 1923. The […]

Good stuff on anti-enviro Supreme Court justices and more

We're having a long meeting today to discuss editorial strategy, so there will be no more blogging. (Horrors!)

To keep yourselves occupied, check out two pieces in the Atlantic Monthly. First and most importantly, Benjamin Wittes argues persuasively that the biggest danger posed by the possibility of a majority-conservative Supreme Court is not to abortion or civil rights, but to environmental protections. It's a thoughtful, nuanced piece with some interesting details I wasn't aware of. You should stop reading this and go read that instead.

While you're over there, read Joshua Green's Lakoff-bashing. Green obviously has a pretty shallow understanding of what Lakoff is about, but he is right about one thing: Progressives need new institutions and new ideas, not just new glosses on the old ideas.

And speaking of Lakoff-bashing, check out this priceless Ezra Klein post, wherein he makes the same point I made here (after, it turns out, Klein had already made it), which is that Lakoff himself is pretty damn bad at framing. It's amusing. Here's a funny bit:

After the election, I read Lakoff's book for a review I was doing. I was stunned. The guy's recommendations seemed completely ignorant of everything else he said. Frames, for instance, bring to mind a host of contexts and other information. So the strict father frame the Republicans use immediately paints Democrats as mommy. And while mom is awesome, it's dad you call when you hear noises downstairs late at night. That's how Republicans win elections, they basically mount the stage and say "did you hear that, America? I think I heard someone jiggling the door downstairs! Now would you rather have George Bush and his bat go check it out, or should we send John Kerry and his baguette?" So Lakoff responds to this by suggesting that Democrats become a gender neutral nurturing parent, which simply doesn't exist, and would actually just mean mom.

Read it all.

Will KIA’s ads give car sharing a boost?

Last night, mindless TV called. An ad came on that I've seen before, but never focused on. It's for the KIA Sportage (which I really want to pronounce with a lovely French accent), and shows a series of people driving the same car, tossing the keys to each other as they go. Wow: car sharing hits prime time! This is almost as good as hybrids on Alias.

I know, I know, I'm being too literal. KIA's point is simply that this vehicle works for all kinds of different people. But along the way, the company makes sharing a car look pretty darn zippy. Maybe it'll get viewers thinking ... (naw -- see first line).

Evangelical enviros leery of associating with, uh, enviros

Richard Cizik, head of the National Association of Evangelicals, is heavily hawking the notion of "creation care" these days.  (That would be God-flavored environmentalism, for those not in the know.)

Three weeks ago, he chatted up the concept with NPR's Scott Simon (whom I wholly adore, but that's a topic for another post).  

This past weekend, he got his mug and his pitch in The New York Times Magazine, via a Q&A with Deborah Solomon.  An excerpt:  

Q: What is wrong with [the] term [environmentalism]?

A: It's not the term. It's the environmentalists themselves. I was recently speaking with the leadership of the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation, and I told them, ''Gentlemen, I respect you, but at this point don't plan on any formal collaborations.''

Q: Why? Because they lean to the left?

A: Environmentalists have a bad reputation among evangelical Christians for four reasons. One, they rely on big-government solutions. Two, their alliance with population-control movements. Three, they keep kooky religious company.

Q: What is your idea of a kooky religion?

A: Some environmentalists are pantheists who believe creation itself is holy, not the Creator.

Q: And what's No. 4?

A: There's a certain gloom and doom about environmentalists. They tend to prophecies of doom that don't happen. Look at the movie "The Day After Tomorrow," in which New York City freezes over.

The evangelicals don't want to play with the enviros, and -- sad, but true -- that's probably smart strategizing. The Christian right already knows how to get Bush's attention, and Rove's devotion. Can any green groups say the same?

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.