Monthly Archives : April 2015

A Farewell Post

The time has come for me to say goodbye to this blog. I started Collide-a-Scape in early 2009, when I was halfway through a year-long fellowship at the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism. I knew I was about to embark on a new chapter in my professional life (from full-time magazine editor to…Continue Reading…

The Robert Kennedy Jr. Anti-Vaccine Tour

My mother-in-law, who lives in New Jersey, recently mailed me a newspaper clipping. It was about a famous person who came to her state to publicly oppose a bill that would make it harder for parents to exempt their children from school-mandated vaccinations.  This same famous person had just visited two other states to lobby against similar legislation…Continue Reading…

On GMOs, Cultural Brokers, and Sticky Narratives

A Zurich-based think tank asks: “Who is influencing the way we think today? Whose ideas are determining ours?”  To answer that question, it teamed up with an MIT researcher to rank the world’s top 100 thought leaders of 2014. The Oxford dictionary defines a thought leader as someone “whose views on a subject are taken to be…Continue Reading…

How to Engage with Popular Messengers who Exploit Fears?

If you are late to the Food Babe phenomenon, by which I mean the rise of a food activist named Vani Hari, there are no shortage of recent media articles exploring her fame. The Atlantic profile is among the best, because it is not judgmental and it gives voice to the science-based critics who are exasperated by…Continue Reading…

About that Controversial New Yorker Article on Climate Change by a Famous Novelist

If you follow climate and environmental discourse as closely as I do, then you know that the recent New Yorker piece by the acclaimed novelist Jonathan Franzen has triggered 1) applause, 2) denunciation, 3) head-scratching. The self-proclaimed eco-pragmatists at The Breakthrough Institute are cheering. One of the best essays on climate change and conservation I have…Continue Reading…