Population has long been the third rail of environmental discourse. So while a lot of people are rightly incredulous at Rush Limbaugh’s ugly rant against Andy Revkin’s suggestion that people should perhaps be rewarded for having less children, I can’t say that I’m all that shocked by it. Really. First of all, this is Limbaugh…Continue Reading…
That’s the name of a new twice-weekly feature that I just started writing for Nature’s great blog, Climate Feedback. My first post appeared yesterday, and you can look for them regularly on Tuesdays and Fridays in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference. The posts will survey topical storylines and noteworthy news of the week related…Continue Reading…
Over my cornflakes this morning I was mulling this comment by Deltoid’s Tim Lambert, which he left in response to my criticism yesterday of Joe Romm, who is on the hot seat for claiming It is exceedingly common in regular journalism to ask people for a quote that makes a very specific point “” I’ve…Continue Reading…
Michael Tobis is to be applauded for being open to the idea of geoengineering, but he’s delusional if he thinks the climate activist community is also open to it. In my post yesterday, I argued that, for climate activists, any discussion of climate adaptation is an unwelcome distraction from the debate at hand on mitigation….Continue Reading…
More proof that environmentalists can’t chew gum and talk about climate adaptation at the same time comes in this post from David Roberts at Grist. The cognitive dissonance from this crowd continues to amaze me. As we learned earlier this year, the carbon load already in the atmosphere is projected to lead to irreversible climate…Continue Reading…
That’s the title of a fantastic piece by Chris Turner in the October issue of The Walrus, a Canadian magazine. He turns the typical environmental tale of crisis on its head, suggesting that, We need a new kind of story, a new template for our ecological philosophy “” one that acknowledges what we have lost…Continue Reading…
Do leading Democrats and enviros want a climate change bill so bad that they are being snookered by Republicans? Absolutely, argues Roger Pielke, Jr: The take over of climate policy by the Republican agenda is the most over-looked aspect of this entire debate. Perhaps those covering the horse race can’t see the forest for the…Continue Reading…
Even the liberal Huffington Post can’t see it: The time has not yet arrived and circumstances have not yet evolved where Barack Obama is anywhere near the point where he has earned this prize. I don’t blame him for this capricious action; it was the Nobel Peace Committee which committed the offense, which no doubt…Continue Reading…
If we really want to lick this global warming problem, then we need to be scared straight, says an Australian ethics professor: There is a view we should not scare people because it makes them go down their burrows and close the door but I think the situation is so serious that although people are…Continue Reading…
Ecology was once considered the “subversive science.” To a large degree, environmentalism’s legitimacy derives from its long-time alliance with ecology. If environmentalists were going to a big dance, they always chose ecology as their hot date. That was before climate change became the new girl on the block. Before climate change won an Oscar, became…Continue Reading…