environmental movement
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Thoughts on Pollan’s food-movement essay
I want to add a few thoughts on the significance of Michael Pollan’s recent essay in The New York Review of Books to Bonnie Powell’s summary. Pollan posits the existence of a social movement geared to transforming the food system. He emphasizes that it’s loose, internally conflicted, and nascent — but all the same, “one […]
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Big Green and little green clash over the American Power Act
When Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) unveiled their long-awaited American Power Act last week, it drew two sharply different responses from two collections of activist groups. Two hundred groups that might be called “little green” immediately condemned the climate and energy bill in a joint letter, calling it “greenwashing in the extreme.” […]
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Where is the left?
Glenn Greenwald notes the rapid, bipartisan erosion of basic civil liberties, which didn’t even hit a speed bump with the transition to the Obama administration: A bipartisan group from Congress sponsors legislation to strip Americans of their citizenship based on Terrorism accusations. Barack Obama claims the right to assassinate Americans far from any battlefield and […]
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Can the Gulf oil spill be environmentalists’ Arizona moment?
A May Day protest against Arizona’s immigration law.Photo courtesy th.omas via FlickrWithin a week of Arizona’s new racial-profiling bill becoming law, the “1 MILLION Strong AGAINST the Arizona Immigration Law SB1070” group on Facebook climbed to nearly 1.3 million people. Via Facebook and emails and phone calls, I’ve been asked to attend vigils and marches, […]
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‘End of Oil’ author warns enviros not to exploit Gulf oil spill
Paul RobertsPaul Roberts, author of the influential 2004 book The End of Oil, cautions that we can’t expect the end of oil spills any time soon. Environmentalists are using the ongoing Gulf of Mexico disaster to argue for a permanent stop to offshore drilling, but reality check: the U.S. is decades away from shedding its […]
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Republican Opinions on Environmentalism have Shifted Drastically in the Past 10 Years
In honor of Earth Day, Gallup has just released polling showing how American’s opinions of the environmental movement have changed in the previous ten years. At first glance, the results aren’t pretty: But as has been the case in several other recent polls, the change is due almost entirely to a sharp shift among Republicans. […]
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Labor and environmentalists have been teaming up since the first Earth Day
The approach of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22 provides us an opportunity to reflect on the “long, strange trip” shared by the environmental movement and the labor movement over four decades here on Spaceship Earth. A billion people participate in Earth Day events, making it the largest secular civic event in […]
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A movement far larger than the Tea Party
As an antidote to news of the oil spill on the Great Barrier Reef, here’s Paul Hawken giving last May’s commencement address at Portland University. From the entrepreneur, author, and ideas guy: There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode […]
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Why environmentalists should get involved in immigration reform
How many enviros can you spot in this picture?Photo: Salina CanizalesI grew up in a family that sorted recyclables, reused containers until they were no longer reusable, and walked whenever and wherever we could. We turned off our lights and carefully monitored our energy consumption. We made sure that we didn’t leave the water running, […]