Skip to content
Grist home
All donations TRIPLED!

Articles by Ideas for On Day One

Featured Article

The UN Dispatch-Grist collaboration rolls on today with a discussion prompt submitted by On Day One user teiki:

A key to the massive use of fossil fuels in the U.S. is gross overconsumption. We use way more than necessary, through a combined dependence on the automobile and an infatuation with big, gas-hungry cars, trucks and SUVs., through wasted energy consumption in our homes and offices in everything from their construction to “phantom loads” and light bulbs, and through the amount of green house gas emitted by livestock supplying an overconsumption of food. We must learn to use less.

David Roberts, Tony Kreindler, media director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund, and Timothy B. Hurst respond below the fold.

David Roberts

I think you need to be really careful on this one. There’s no benefit in framing over-consumption as an issue of American greed or gluttony. If you come out preaching about sin, trying to make people feel guilty and repent, you play to stereotype, get mired in a culture war, and quickly end up preaching only to the choir.

It is true, via accident... Read more

All Articles