Tag: environmentalism
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How to Talk About Climate Change So People Will Listen
The Atlantic: How to Talk About Climate Change So People Will Listen Environmentalists warn us that apocalypse awaits. Economists tell us that minimal fixes will get us through. Here's how we can move beyond the impasse. This is an exceptionally good piece by Charles Mann on how we think and talk about climate change. It…
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Thoughts on the “The Limits to Panic”
Forty-one years after the publication of the infamous Limits to Growth, Bjorn Lomborg offers this excellent piece, The Limits to Panic: … But the report's fundamental legacy remains: we have inherited a tendency to obsess over misguided remedies for largely trivial problems, while often ignoring big problems and sensible remedies. In the early 1970's, the…
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How Green Are Millennials?
New Geography: How Green Are Millennials? "… President Obama was also right, from a Millennials’ perspective, to emphasize the need for America to become a leader in sustainable energy technologies. Seventy-one percent of Millennials believe America’s energy policy should focus on developing “alternative sources of energy such as wind, solar and hydrogen technology; only a…
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Environmentalist Mark Lynas Changes View on GMOs
Mark Lynas: Lecture to Oxford Farming Conference, 3 January 2013 I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby…
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Anthropocene: Do We Need a New Environmentalism for a New Age?
A few days ago, Matt Ridley had a piece in the Wall Street Journal, Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change, in which he wrote: … In short: We can now estimate, based on observations, how sensitive the temperature is to carbon dioxide. We do not need to rely heavily on unproven models. Comparing the…
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The Anti-Science Left?
Two weeks ago, I published a post Why Are Environmentalists Taking Anti-Science Positions? referencing an article written by environmentalist Fred Pearce. I read this book review in Forbes over the weekend. Forbes: Enviro-Romanticism Alert: Obama Won, But Can He Shake the Anti-Innovation, Junk Science Beliefs of His Base? A polemical new book, Science Left Behind,…
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Why Are Environmentalists Taking Anti-Science Positions?
Environment360: Why Are Environmentalists Taking Anti-Science Positions? On issues ranging from genetically modified crops to nuclear power, environmentalists are increasingly refusing to listen to scientific arguments that challenge standard green positions. This approach risks weakening the environmental movement and empowering climate contrarians. From Rachel Carson's Silent Spring to James Hansen's modern-day tales of climate apocalypse,…
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Economists in the Wild
Acton Commentary: Economists in the Wild … The rapid material advance of the last 200 years has provided more comfortable lives in several meaningful ways: It has led to longer lifespans, conquest of diseases, and the ability of the human population to grow more rapidly and securely than at any time in previous history. (It…
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As Consumers Cut Spending, ‘Green’ Products Lose Allure
New York Times: As Consumers Cut Spending, ‘Green’ Products Lose Allure When Clorox introduced Green Works, its environment-friendly cleaning line, in 2008, it secured an endorsement from the Sierra Club, a nationwide introduction at Wal-Mart, and it vowed that the products would “move natural cleaning into the mainstream.” Sales that year topped $100 million, and…