Ladybug’s Recent Comments

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  I love the implication that those of us who aren't screechy scolds are simply ignoring all sorts of appalling stuff happening all over the place. Is there any small chance that perhaps it's your worldview that's incomplete?

  Criticize this move all you want, but also recognize that you're a guy who maintains a web site chronicling other people's hypocrisy -- the most overrated vice in the world -- and Greenpeace has gone out and saved a bunch of forests.

  On Kimberly-Clark, Greenpeace hug it out posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago 8 Responses

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  I clicked over to Keith's web site. Tag line: "Exposing Ethical Hypocrites Everywhere!" Thank god someone is doing this difficult work. Now if only someone would set up an "Exposing Screechy Scolds Everywhere!" blog, and the cycle of life would be complete. Meanwhile, this announcement seems to be good news for forests.On Kimberly-Clark, Greenpeace hug it out posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago 8 Responses

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  It's always nice to have one's preconceptions confirmed, and now I know that I can safely put Lovelock in the demented crank category. It's interesting that he's whipping out Munich analogies. These used to be the exclusive preserve of right wing nutjobs. I guess it was only a matter of time before others found new uses for them.

  On James Lovelock and the End Times posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago 8 Responses

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  I don't have a strong opinion on Cass Sunstein, although he seems like a decent enough person. This, though, is tough to stomach: "I cannot help but remember many economists'  awesome failure to predict and avoid the global economic meltdown and wonder why their predictions in the health and safety arena should be even more essential these days."

  Economists are not generally in the business of predicting and avoiding the movements of financial markets. The statement above sort reads like: "I cannot help but remember many architects' awesome failure to predict and avoid the destruction of the World Trade Center and wonder why they are being consulted on the design of its replacement."

  
  Economists need to have a voice in the health and safety arena because priorities and tradeoffs are necessary, and those of who care about the environment can't properly decide what tradeoffs to make unless we have some sense of costs and benefits. The author fails to understand that economics, like science in general, is descriptive, not prescriptive. Handing the reins over to climatologists isn't going to tell us how to solve the problem.

  On Regulatory czar Sunstein's first days posted 4 months ago 2 Responses

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  I've read this a few times now, and I'm at a loss for what to make of it. It's considered "drinking the kool-aid" to believe that milk prices are dropping because of supply and demand? What else would be causing them to drop? Aren't supply and demand at the heart of the "global, free-market system" that the author decries? Other mysteries abound: How can a system be both free-market and controlled by an evil and anti-competitive cabal of companies? These would seem to be opposite claims. What are the statistics about non-milk dairy goods meant to suggest? There is absolutely no contradiction in the fact that demand for domestic milk is dropping while imports of dairy products rise. There's that pesky supply and demand again. Here's another question: why are we supposed to care about this? I'm interested in the environment, not the economic travails of dairy farmers. If anything, plummeting milk demand would seem to be a good thing for the environment. Basically, I can't make any damned sense of this. It's just a bunch of confusing statistics bolted on top of a rant about corporatism, globalism, and a bunch of other stuff the author seems not to like. (As an aside, if the author thinks the financial crash was engineered by Wall Street, he'd probably be better off not posting on economic matters.)

  On Why are milk prices plummeting? posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago 10 Responses