Blue Olives

The science and technology are here. The general consensus of the population is that environmental and energy issues are important to them. Start with recycling and home energy conservation. Add the purchase of a hybrid vehicle (much more on that later). Use mass transit or ride a bike as much as possible--or walk. Buy organic food at Whole Foods. Buy organic from farmer's markets. Purchase your beer in returnable bottles (65% of the beverage bottles made in America are for beer). Explore solar electricity, composting, buying from a "green" utility. Look for a job with a company committed to sustainable development. Pay attention to what architects are doing these days. They are fully committed to "Green Design." They have done the research over the past 35 years. They understand daylighting, solar heat gain, fresh air exchangers, workstation climate controls, ergonomic furniture, low emission textiles, and the overall aesthetic allure of buildings. Green archi...

Anti-environmental groups are out in full force now in a second wave of the Hurricane Katrina disaster blame game (it's kind of sad that folks of any political persuasion feel the need to hold people responsible for chaos and disaster of this proportion). A tiny "article" was posted at the LibertyMatters web site on September 16, 2005. This group is a bit edgy, to say the least. The "article" refers to two different other “articles” from FrontPageMagazine.com which seems to be another rather edgy and interesting news source, but a bit right of Rush Limbaugh (don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against the Right, I just don't understand where they're coming from). The National Review really got the ball rolling with their piece by John Berlau dated September 8, 2005. If it's true that the Justice Department is doing some Green head-hunting these day, then we may really have a problem. Who's watching the Justice Department and the FBI? The Homel...

Getunderground is publishing a six-part essay that I've written called, "The Green Emperor Gets Naked." Part I starts out with a discussion of the paper "The Death of Environmentalism" submitted by a couple of whipper snappers (Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus; see the video of a panel discussion they took part in at Yale University this year , it's down in the righthand side of their website) out of California to the Environmental Grantsmakers Association last fall. Obviously they were being rhetorical, and everyone's got an opinion about what they really mean (and whether the paper itself has any intellectual merit). But they've done two very important things: 1) they point out that Global Warming requires a much more focused effort by those in the movement; 2) they call into question the notion of what it means to be an environmentalist. The main case S & N make is that we need to integrate environmental issues with those of labor, civ...