A Thinking Reed

  • Global warming, food shortages, and … civilizational collapse?

    I got to hear a talk the other day by Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute. He talked, among other things, about the relationship between global warming, food scarcity, and the geo-political instability that could result. Scary stuff. This article provides a summary of his ideas.

  • Souter’s out, according to the Times

    I wondered why their were all those reporters hanging around the Supreme Court when I was out running this morning. Now I know.

  • The Life You Can Save 5

    So, where have we traveled so far? Singer has argued that 1) we have a moral obligation to help those who lack access to sufficient food, shelter, and medical care and 2) that we can do this by donating to aid agencies. Assuming we agree with him, how much should we give? Part 4 tries…

  • Boldly going

    A buddy of mine scored some tickets to an advanced screening of the new Star Trek movie last night, and was kind enough to invite me along. I enjoyed it a lot. I consider myself a fairly serious Trek fan, if not a true, hardcore Trekkie, and I thought it was great fun. It also…

  • Tortured reading

    I haven’t been blogging on the torture issue, mostly because others are doing it far more justice than I even could. But, in case you aren’t already reading them, Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan, John Schwenkler, and Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings have been my regular sources of info and analysis on this. Also see: this piece…

  • The Life You Can Save 4

    While chapter 6 of The Life You Can Save was concerned with identifying individual programs that make a real difference in the lives of those they aim to help, chapter 7 looks at criticisms of aid at what we might call the “macro” level. One prominent critic of international aid is William Easterly, author of…

  • “it’s hard, if not impossible, to be a meat-eating environmentalist”

    Via John Schwenkler, Rod Dreher interviews James McWilliams, who Dreher calls a “contrarian agrarian.” He is a fierce critic of our system of industrial agriculture, but he also slaughters some sacred cows (pardon the expression) of the organic food and locavore movements. He has some kind words for GMOs and particularly questions the sustainability of…

  • The ecological promise of an orthodox theology

    I was flipping through H. Paul Santmire’s excellent book Nature Reborn: The Ecological and Cosmic Promise of Christian Theology, and discovered that he takes Matthew Fox’s (no, not that one) “creation spirituality” to task on many of the same grounds that I criticized J. Philip Newell. Like Newell, Fox embraces a form of nature mysticism,…

  • The use and abuse of Celtic Christianity

    Last night–somewhat against my better judgment–I went to hear a talk given by “Celtic Christianity” guru J. Philip Newell at a “faith forum” sponsored by a group of Capitol Hill churches, including ours. Though I didn’t know too much about Newell going in, my fears that it would be fuzzy feel-good New Ageism were, alas,…

  • The Life You Can Save 3

    In part 3 of The Life You Can Save, Singer tries to answer the question whether we each really can save a life (or several) by donating more to overseas aid. Specifically, how much does it take to save a life, and is aid actually effective in improving the lives of the world’s poorest people?…