Latest Articles
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Models and rock bands are overrated.
A while back I drew attention to Gil Friend's "Sustainable Business: A Declaratin of Leadership," a handy (and colorful!) capsule summary of what sustainable biz is all about. Now that much-blogged-about document has its very own website, where you can download a poster-sized version. Put it on the wall of your dorm room!
None of the sub-pages work yet, but I'm assuming Gil is all over that.
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L.A. tries to get itself out of its sprawled mess.
Well, from the LA Times, at least.
The paper's had a series of guest editorials about traffic, transit and urban planning -- specifically, how sprawling, congested LA can get itself out of the fix it's put itself into over the last 60 years or so. The LA area is surprisingly dense, but the population is spread out fairly uniformly over a large area -- which makes it very hard to service the region cost-effectively using transit. At the same time, building new roads has become both exhorbitantly expensive and politically unpalatable.
Sounds a little like much of the rest of urban America, no?
To summarize...
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Ubiquity Is the Mother of Reinvention
Labeling and certification move beyond organic in U.S. With the U.S. organics industry going mainstream, a coterie of anti-The-Man farmers are getting out, eschewing federally regulated “organic” certification and creating terms and systems of their own to address eco-friendly agricultural practices not covered by the federal regs. The Food Alliance has created a certification process […]
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Read Chris Mooney’s two recent columns on climate-change skeptics.
Chris Mooney is on a roll lately. I finally got around to his piece in the latest issue of Mother Jones, and it's an absolute must-read. Lots of people have the vague impression that there's a sort of climate-skeptic cottage industry out there, funded largely by a few large financial interests, particularly ExxonMobil. Well, they're right -- check out this chart.
There's nothing wrong, of course, with industries trying to advance their views on economic and policy issues, but this is a coordinated attempt to "do science," or rather, create the illusion of scientific controversy around an issue on which there is in fact overwhelming scientific consensus.
Also check out Mooney's latest column in the American Prospect, which highlights some of the more obvious absurdities in James Inhofe's recent speeches on "Four Pillars of Climate Alarmism." In particular, Inhofe is cherry-picking from a report that draws heavily on another report he hated so much he tried to sue to block its release.
Inhofe faces this predicament because of his, and the right's, cavalier treatment of serious scientific documents. If climate-science reports are deemed too "alarmist," as the "National Assessment" was, they are viciously denounced. If the reports are subtle and contain plenty of language about scientific uncertainty that can be quoted out of context, they are misrepresented as throwing the scientific consensus into question.
Clown town.
Update [2005-4-19 12:41:23 by Dave Roberts]: If you get tired of seeing the same old oft-debunked climate-skeptic arguments used again and again, stay entertained with Deltoid's Global Warming Skeptic Bingo! Fun for the whole family.
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A Matter of Great Export
Arctic Refuge oil could be sent overseas A portentous U.S. commitment, sold with slogans about freedom and national security, that turns out to be all about the oil industry. No, not that one. We’re talking about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Drilling proponents cite the fact that the U.S. imports most of the […]
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So tell us … what’s your dirty little environmental secret?
I know this is going to come as a shock to you all, but someone needs to speak the truth. It seems that environmentalists have a bit of a reputation for being holier-than-thou — even, dare I say it, evangelistic. In our zeal to save the planet, we both scare and bore our fellow citizens, […]
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The Best “Science” Money Can Buy
ExxonMobil plows millions into funding for 40 climate-skeptic groups In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute outlined a strategy to sow the seeds of doubt about global-warming science “with Congress, the media, and other key audiences.” “Victory will be achieved,” read an API memo, “when … recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.'” Since […]
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Good news and bad
A day late, but never a dollar short: Mike's week in review.
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What’s your secret eco-sin?
Environmentalists have a reputation for being self-righteous, holier-than-thou prigs. And yeah, well, they frequently are. So in the spirit of humanizing and soul cleansing and all that, we've asked a few greens, including writers Bill McKibben and Terry Tempest Williams, to confess their environmental sins. And we're asking you to do the same!
Leave your deepest, darkest environmental sins in comments. We promise, you'll feel better afterward.
