I’m not sure what climate change debate Alexis Madrigal has been paying attention to the last few years, but he sounds like Rip Van Winkle here: I’ve been kicking around an idea recently that crystallized in the form of a short “Room for Debate” op-ed on green jobs that I wrote for The New York Times…Continue Reading…
This should be interesting to watch play out: The shakeup over shale gas — a newly available fuel that has overturned assumptions about energy, climate-change and geopolitics — has now stretched across the Atlantic to England. A drilling company backed by John Browne, the former CEO of BP, says it has discovered the gas equivalent of…Continue Reading…
Two years ago, we saw many headlines like this and this, warning that the future of humanity hinged on the outcome of the Copenhagen climate talks. Now that we are in the run-up to the annual climate equivalent of Groundhog Day, I suspect we’ll start to see more headlines like this one: Failure is not an option for…Continue Reading…
I predict that by the second half of this century nine billion human beings will be living mostly prosperous lives, eating chickens and pigs and cattle while coexisting with about as much nature as was there before we even came on the scene. We will be steadily decreasing the footprint of each human life by…Continue Reading…
UPDATE: Some of the information and assertions in this post have been disputed by Jared Diamond here. In 1995, Jared Diamond wrote an article for Discover magazine that began: In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral…Continue Reading…
The only way I can make sense of today’s NYT column by David Brooks is that somebody in the GOP must have scared the hell out of him. Think about it. In July, Brooks wrote that the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by…Continue Reading…
Reuters reports on the latest bone-headed idea from PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, no stranger to attention-grabbing campaigns featuring nude women, plans to launch a pornography website in the name of animal rights. The nonprofit organization, whose controversial campaigns draw criticism from women’s rights groups, said it hopes to raise awareness of…Continue Reading…
First of all, Bill Clinton knew how to win the big prize (twice). He also knew how to let his adversaries beat themselves. (Think Gingrich.) True, Clinton was his own worst enemy, as the Monica episode demonstrated. But there’s no disputing his “intellectual and tactical nimbleness,” which Joe Klein wrote about in this 2003 Time…Continue Reading…
During a debate last week for Republican presidential candidates and in interviews after it, Representative Michele Bachmann called the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer “dangerous.” Medical experts fired back quickly. Her statements were false, they said, emphasizing that the vaccine is safe and can save lives. Mrs. Bachmann was soon on the defensive, acknowledging that she was not a doctor or a scientist But…Continue Reading…
Democrats have good reason to fear this horror sequel. James Fallows lists all the gory reasons why. I’m already having flashbacks to the angry shouting matches Nader’s nihilism triggered between editors (including myself) at Audubon magazine, where I worked at the time of the 2000 election.