Social and ethical issues
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UPDATE: Now with links! The current issue of the American Conservative, in addition to featuring John‘s very cool cover story on “conservative cuisine” (which I may blog about later), carries Rod “Crunchy Con” Dreher’s interview with Michael Pollan. This passage, where Dreher tries to draw a connection between Pollan’s “organic” conception of the environment and Read more
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The Nation has a nice overview of Bill McKibben’s writing, focusing on some of the tensions and evolution in his thought. McKibben’s more recent writing (e.g. Deep Economy) has taken a turn away from the wilderness ethic and towards a focus on “durable communities” and responsible stewardship. Our technological prowess, it seems, will inevitably change Read more
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A few days ago I wrote a post that took as its jumping-off point an article on the shortcomings of GDP by Jonathan Rowe in Harper‘s. I see here that Mr. Rowe has an entire archive of articles written from what I would describe as a generally decentralist green/left perspective that I find highly congenial. Read more
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William Saletan reports on a movement afoot in Spain to grant “basic rights” to great apes – a group that includes chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. A resolution approved by a Spanish parliamentary committe would “commit the government to ending involuntary use of apes in circuses, TV ads, and dangerous experiments.” The resolution is based on Read more
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I picked up the June issue of Harper’s before a train trip a few weeks ago because of the its interesting-looking cover story on the strife in the Episcopal Church. But only last night, as was I catching up on the rest of the issue, did I come across Jonathan Rowe’s “Our Phony Economy,” which Read more
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I got an e-mail with a link to this interview with Michael Pollan (You too can subscribe to the Michael Pollan e-mail list!) at this new site sponsored by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Three points stood out for me. One, the primary distinction between food systems is fossil fuel-based vs. solar Read more
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While we’re on the subject of food, I’m very much looking forward to John Schwenkler‘s upcoming article on “culinary conservatism” for the American Conservative, which he mentions here. In the same post, John makes the case for what I think it’s fair to call a libertarian approach to food production, the idea being that our Read more
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As far as California ballot initiatives go this year, all eyes will undoubtedly be on the one to overturn the state supreme court’s recent decision on same-sex marriage. But allow me to draw your attention to another ballot intitiative of potentially far-reaching consequence: the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, which would phase out phase Read more
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Jim Henley offers the obvious, but no less sound for that, rebuttle to worries that lump things like banning trans fats and foie gras into the category of “food nannysim”: In a video bemoaning food nannies, Baylen Linnekin, who is a good guy and whose writing I enjoy, begs a question. He declares NYC’s bans Read more
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In the argument over same-sex marriage, social conservatives have seen a string of defeats. For all intents and purposes, they have lost the argument based on straightforward morality (“gay sex is wrong”) and the argument based on social harm (“it will undermine straight marriage”). But the last-ditch argument that, in the wake of the California Read more
A Thinking Reed 