Stentor’s Recent Comments

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  I hadn't known that ...

  I'm always hearing free marketers singing the praises of ITQ schemes as a way to get the magic of the market to halt overfishing. But I'd never heard any of them mention the problem of government subsidies. You'd think they'd want to start there, since it's much simpler to shrink the government and get it to stop interfering in the market, than to expand the government into an overseer and enforcer of an ITQ system.On WTO talks could end fishing subsidies posted 2 years, 5 months ago 8 Responses

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  More clever than you think

  Let me say first that I don't subscribe to the skeptical argument at issue here. However, if I were a climate scientist looking to push the conclusion that would get me the most funding, I think there's a good case to be made for emphasizing the certainty of the science so far, given the current political climate. If I emphasize the uncertainty, then the Bush-Howard crowd will say "oh, so it's probably not happening, so we'll cut your funding." But if I emphasize the certainty, they'll say "crap, we can't keep doing nothing -- let's stall by demanding more research anyway."

  Also, I don't think the IPCC report is as uncongenial to additional research as you suggest -- our understanding of the basic science is good, but there's still lots of work to be done on clarifying regional and local impacts, and developing adaptive strategies, none of which would be happening without a degree of certainty at the more basic level. On The 'in it for the money' theory of climate science doesn't pan out posted 2 years, 5 months ago 9 Responses

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  Secular Enviros Using Religious Language

  Religions also offer a spirited alternative to the way secular environmentalists sound when they rail at out-of-control consumerism. Instead of coming off like shrill spoilsports religious people can appeal to the simple (and comparatively non-polluting) pleasures of religious community as alternatives.

  This depends on the audience. For one significant sector of the population, it's religion that always sounds like "shrill spoilsports" and secular environmentalism that offers a vision of the "simple pleasures of community."

  Also, it's important that people promoting a religious environmentalist message are sincere believers, not non-believers who have adopted religion as a PR strategy. If secular people start trying to talk in religious language and lecture religious people about what Jesus or Buddha really wants them to do, their fakeness and theological/cultural ignorance will be obvious.On A guest essay posted 2 years, 5 months ago 7 Responses

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  babies and bathwater

  But many babies went out with the bath water of Christian dogma and superstition. One of those was morality. Even now, science can't say why we ought not to harm the environment except to say that we shouldn't be self-destructive.

  It's not science's job to tell us why we ought not to harm the environment, or to answer any other moral question. That's the job of moral philosophy -- and there's a great deal of secular moral philosophy out there (done by laypeople and professionals). Christianity, on the other hand, has historically not just failed to provide a justification for environmental protection but has actively exhorted people not to care about the environment (though luckily this is changing now).On A new call to walk the talk posted 2 years, 7 months ago 39 Responses

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  hopefully this is constructive

  Sorry, the "URGE2" acronym sounds so square-trying-desperately-to-be-hip that it makes me cringe (and I'm pretty square). And I think the "mine megawatts" bullet point needs a new title -- before I read the explanation, I didn't know what it meant (as compared to "kill coal," whose meaning is obvious).

  Also, we need to be careful about what URGE2 is. It's a key agenda item, not a summation of what environmentalism is about. So to draw an analogy to the religious right, it's parallel to "stop gay sex," not "run society based on the Bible." Otherwise we risk falling into an energy-reductionist conceptualization of environmentalism.On The meme all the kids are talking about! posted 2 years, 10 months ago 22 Responses