A Thinking Reed

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

Environment

  • Salvation as re-creation

    A while back I wrote about Keith Ward’s understanding of how God acts in the world, as explained in his book Divine Action. Later in the book he devotes a chapter to the incarnation and offers an interpretation of the atonement. Ward argues that Jesus is properly seen as the enfleshment or embodiment of God’s Read more

  • Schwenkler vs. Larison on trade

    There’s a spirited and high-quality debate about free trade between John Schwenkler and Daniel Larison at Larison’s site here. I’ll admit that I’ve swung more into the protectionist camp in recent years, or at least I think the benefits of free trade have been greatly overblown. But old-time protectionism that benefits certain well-connected interests at Read more

  • “Mother Nature doesn’t do bailouts”

    Joseph Romm on our global economic Ponzi scheme. Sobering stuff. Read more

  • Our future: skyscraper farms?

    Paul Roberts (author of The End of Oil, The End of Food–you get the idea) writes that creating a sustainable food system will require more than “buy local” or “buy organic.” In some cases, he says, these can be misleading and oversimplifying labels for a much more complex reality. For instance, how food is produced Read more

  • By (almost) any means necessary

    I thought this interview with Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. They’re like Greenpeace on steroids: they do everything short of harming people to stop whalers. In fact, Watson calls Greenpeace the “Avon Ladies” of environmentalism and compares their philosophy of “bearing witness” to standing idly by while someone’s attacked: They have this Read more

  • Michael Pollan interviewed in Mother Jones

    Here. I do take issue with this, though: MJ: When you first wrote the mantra “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” did you have any idea what kind of reaction you’d get? MP: Well, I studied my poetry in school, and I knew there was something about the way it sounded that made it Read more

  • The helicopter vs. the airplane

    I’m not sure I have anything particularly insightful to say about it, but I wanted to link to this essay by ecological economist Herman Daly on a steady state economy versus what he calls a “failed growth” one. In the scramble to give a Keynesian boost to our economy the assumption that continued growth is Read more

  • Tasty, well-seasoned carrots are better than sticks

    The city of Cincinnati, as part of its “Green City” initiative, is suggesting that residents eat less meat (via). While this topic’s been getting more press lately, it still seems to get relatively little discussion in environmental circles. Is this because greens are afraid of looking like lifestyle nannies? (See here for more on that.) Read more

  • Food reform and climate change action

    Two sides of the same coin, argues Tom Laskawy. See also this two–part checklist of specific actions the USDA could take to reform the food system. Read more

  • Does the environment need God?

    A lifelong atheist learns to jettison his simplistic views of religion (God as “an old guy sitting in a chair”) when he realizes that something very much like a religious zeal will be required to address the climate crisis. The worry I have here is of Christians being enlisted into providing a religious imprimatur on Read more