A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Environment

  • Handful o’ links

    Britain’s Labour Party needs to reinvent itself as a new liberal party. Obama vs. McCain on climate and energy policy – not the same. Animals as gentically modified drug machines. Is Google re-wiring our brains? Obama: what kind of liberal? Read more

  • Redeeming the time

    LutherPunk has started up a new blog less focused on theology and ministry and more focused on crafting a lifestyle of self-sufficience and reduced consumption in what might seem like a not-too-promising location: modern suburbia. Derek weighs in here and points out that resisting consumerism dovetails with classic Christian virtues like “prudence, temperance, moderation, and Read more

  • The trouble with food

    Speaking of hippies, here’s a review of some recent books critiquing our industrial food system, including Paul Roberts’ disturbingly titled “The End of Food” (he also authored the equally cheery “The End of Oil”) and Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food” (which I heartily recommend). Read more

  • Hippie cons?

    Dan McCarthy writes that, along with Ron Paulites, post-industrial localist conservatives are a hopeful sign on the Right, and kindly mentions this blog as a small data point. Whether this adds up to a “movement” is anyone’s guess, but the blogosphere (ironically) has given me the opportunity to be exposed to people who take issues Read more

  • The sanctimonious carnivore

    I really don’t want to turn this into the all vegetarianism all the time blog. For one thing, I do have other interests. For another, I can only assume most readers don’t like being hectored about their dietary choices all the time. Plus, I’ve never been the proselityzing type. But for whatever reason there seems Read more

  • (Eco)culture wars

    Via Jeremy, a smart post from Patrick Deneen on the way Left vs. Right thinking is driving a lot of people’s reactions to environmental and resource challenges. I continue to be somewhat amazed at the glib dismissal of global warming and other environmental problems on the part of many conservatives. There is almost no attempt Read more

  • Northcott’s A Moral Climate

    Michael Northcott, a Scottish theologian, has a new book out on theological ethics and climate change. Northcott previously wrote a good book on the environment and Christian ethics, and this new one got a glowing write up in the Christian Century by Duke University chaplain Sam Wells. I’ve already ordered the book; it looks like Read more

  • The humanist half-way house

    God save us even from well-meant benevolence. It is possible to be sure, in individual cases, what is or is not to an entity’s profit or harm. It seems entirely obvious that we should not wantonly do harm, but only (at the most) for our necessities. That we should do good is a much more Read more

  • The death knell of factory farming?

    Matt Halteman has a good round up of coverage on the Pew factory farming report. Could be that things are coming to a head as the confluence of a lot of factors (climate change, the price of oil, Pollan-inspired foodieism) seems to be convincing more and more people that our industrial food system is unsustainable. Read more

  • Creative destruction

    The book reviewed here asks if capitalism as we know it is compatible with reining in environmental destruction. The author is pretty convinced that the answer is no. If this is right, the problem then seems to be that 1. there’s no particularly attractive alternative to capitalism currently on offer and 2. even if there Read more