A Thinking Reed

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

Environment

  • The conservatism of Ray Davies

    Apropos of yesterday’s post, the lyrics from The Kinks’ “God’s Children”: Man made the buildings that reach for the sky And man made the motorcar and learned how to fly But he didn’t make the flowers and he didn’t make the trees And he didn’t make you and he didn’t make me And he got Read more

  • “Green consumerism” vs. consuming less

    A couple of weeks ago the New York Times ran a story on the new “green consumerism.” Today George Monbiot writes that it’s not good enough to “buy green”; we have to buy less. His contention is that “green” consumption is at this point a supplement to rather than a replacement of conventional consumption and Read more

  • Green is the new Right(?)

    Philosopher Roger Scruton has a pretty good piece on conservatives and the environment in the latest American Conservative. He mostly avoids the ususal conservative pitfalls when talking about the environment, namely snarky dismissal or ad hominem attacks against Al Gore and dirty hippies. Scruton does make some solid points about the dangers of any “movement”: Read more

  • Farm bill victory

    A while back I blogged about opposition to section 123 of the proposed 2007 farm bill from animal welfare and environmental groups, including the Humane Society. The section was widely understood to pre-empt at the federal level any state efforts to regulate or ban food items and animal products over and above the standards set Read more

  • Localism versus/and nationalism?

    I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little bit sympathetically disposed to Bill Kauffman’s paean to neo-secessionists in Vermont, but I’m not so sure that ultra-localism is the solution to the problems that the secessionists identify. For one thing, to the extent that they deplore the effects of the global marketplace, Read more

  • A veggie Fourth

    Grist has a good article offering suggestions for meat-free twists on summer classics. Parenthetically, it’s interesting how people who curtail their meat consumption for environmental reasons differ in their approach from those who are primarily concerned about animal welfare. Not that the two positions are mutually exclusive, mind you. But enviros, I’ve noticed, tend to Read more

  • Peak oil and the end of liberalism

    Patrick Deneen writes that modern liberalism – “the philosophy premised upon a belief in individual autonomy, one that rejected the centrality of culture and tradition, that eschewed the goal or aim of cultivation toward the good established by dint of (human) nature itself, that regarded all groups and communities as arbitrarily formed and therefore alterable Read more

  • Who is my neighbor?

    *Christopher has posted the text of a talk he recently gave on Christianity and the environment. It’s terrific stuff, with a very Lutheran and Benedictine flavor. I think that rooting our ethics (including our environmental ethics) in our response to what God has first done for us is exactly right and it’s one of the Read more

  • The Humane Society vs. the farm bill

    The Humane Society is opposing section 123 of the proposed 2007 Farm Bill which is supposed to be voted on by the House very soon. The section says that: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no State or locality shall make any law prohibiting the use in commerce of an article that the Secretary of Read more

  • Economics for community

    As I mentioned previously, Daly and Cobb’s central concern is that the abstractions of economics leave out aspects of reality that are crucial to understanding the world and shaping the economy in a way that nourishes community and is sustainable in the long run. Following A.N. Whitehead, they refer to the phenomenon of treating an Read more