To understand just how mainstream anti-GMO sentiment is within environmentalism, check out this event held several weeks ago at Audubon’s educational center in Greenwich, Connecticut. The promo: Two films and speakers about genetically engineered seeds; the history & future of farming; and why leading scientists think GMOs threaten human health and sustainabile food production systems. I really wanted to attend…Continue Reading…
It wasn’t that long ago that peak oil was on everybody’s minds. The basic scenario: Global energy demand would soon outstrip the world’s oil supply. Some of the more feverish types believe this will lead to a civilizational breakdown and a post-apocalyptic Mad Max landscape. Peak oil anxieties first penetrated mainstream media in the mid-2000s,…Continue Reading…
Anyone familiar with environmentalism knows how earnest it is. Saving the planet is serious business, right? Ever watch panels where people are talking about climate change or endangered species? These people don’t joke around, they don’t poke fun at themselves or their cause. Because it is a righteous cause, and they are righteous people. Environmentalists,…Continue Reading…
Is this something that GMO-fearing foodies and greens can agree with?
I used to think, as I wrote in Slate last year, that nothing rivaled the amount of misinformation that has so badly muddied climate science: Then I started paying attention to how anti-GMO campaigners have distorted the science on genetically modified foods. You might be surprised at how successful they’ve been and who has helped…Continue Reading…
When I first wrote about wind turbine syndrome last year, I was pretty dubious of it. Since then, I’ve periodically returned to the subject to explore the wider implications of its premise. To refresh: Some people who live near wind farms say the noise from the whirring blades is making them sick. There is no good…Continue Reading…
British newspaper journalism is an odd creature. The Daily Mail, as I discussed here, is a freakish beast that continues to willfully (how else to explain it?) mangle climate science and misrepresent climate scientists. Myles Allen is the latest victim of David Rose’s crazy-ass reporting on climate change. And yet what to make of Allen’s…Continue Reading…
My favorite environmental heretic continues to be in the news. Earlier this month, the best profile of him yet appeared in the Observer. This week, Macleans publishes an interview with Mark Lynas, the UK environmental writer who is doing more than anyone these days to challenge greens on their ideological resistance to biotechnology. Here’s an…Continue Reading…
One of the staples of immersion journalism are gimmicky stunts that lead Esquire’s A.J. Jacobs to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z and follow every single rule in the bible for one year. The genre has its classics, such as George Plimpton’s Paper Lion, Ted Conover’s Rolling Nowhere and Newjack, and one of my favorites, Nickel…Continue Reading…
Several weeks ago, Whole Foods, the organic supermarket chain many people have a love/hate relationship with, announced that by 2018 any of its products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) would be labeled. A Bloomberg Businessweek article called the move “clever marketing” and said: Transparency is something worth paying for these days. I find it amusing…Continue Reading…