Comments loshloshlahoi has made

  • Nuclear needs to die

    There is no way to ensure that falliable, corruptible humans can handle nuclear waste products responsibly.  Nuclear isn't profitable unless they dodge safety regulations, and the industry does not deserve our trust.

    People need to dismiss nuclear entirely-- we can't do it.On A salient point in the nuclear debate. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 3 Responses

  • oh yeah, I didn't even see the ToraBora stuff

    Way off topic, but our "contributor" seems to enjoy insulting fact-free rants.

    Rush Limbaugh avoided the draft with haemmorhoids, Dick Cheney got his wife pregnant, Tom Delay let the minorities do it, and of course Dubya just didn't show up.  Where is the evidence that conservatives want to fight more than liberals?  Oh, and who opposed declaring war after Pearl Harbor anyway?

    I know some soldiers and they think Rumsfeld is a hack and the whole war on terror is being completely mismanaged.  They are not monolithically conservative at all, especially not the enlisted guys.  I wonder how many of the ToraBora crew JC actually knows.

    Besides, comparing the soldiers of a draft war with a volunteer war is interesting rhetoric but kind of dishonest.  When push comes to shove you think liberals wouldn't fight to save America?  They're the ones who always have.
    On Environmentalism and liberalism shouldn't be joined at the hip. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 61 Responses

  • Who's caricaturing whom?

    If you want "liberal" to mean Ted Rall, then you can't use "conservative" to mean Edmund Burke-- it means Rush Limbaugh.  If you want "conservative" to mean Edmund Burke, then "liberal" is Thomas Jefferson.  

    After all, fair is fair ;-)On Environmentalism and liberalism shouldn't be joined at the hip. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 61 Responses

  • what he said

    bart, that was the sort of writing I come to Grist for-- if "contributor" were meritocratically assigned, you'd be posting in Jeremy's place!On Environmentalism and liberalism shouldn't be joined at the hip. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 61 Responses

  • What enviro-conservatives can do

    Instead of berating liberals for their "ignorance" and poor strategy, enviro-conservatives can do something a lot more painful and difficult but also a lot more effective: talk to other conservatives.

    If all enviro-conservatives self-identified themselves to other conservatives and pushed for a pro-environmental agenda to be adopted by conservative organizations such as the RNC, that would be real progress.  They'd also be more effective, as they'd be dealing with people who agree with them on just about everything.

    Bottom line: if you want to unhitch environmentalism from liberalism, work on the conservatives-- they're the ones who need to be convinced that the environment requires care and attention.
    On Environmentalism and liberalism shouldn't be joined at the hip. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 61 Responses

  • You are missing my point

    AEI "experts" and the material they produce are regularly quoted all around the news media (NPR often uses them, for example).  None of us are underexposed to their ideas-- in fact, I feel rather deluged with material whose integrity I find suspect.  I personally don't come to Grist to get more of that noise, and I think the value of a site like this is that the editors and contributors don't generally cite garbage.

    I'm not sure why my posts have been used as a foil to this silly fact-free anti-enviro-liberalism meta-argument.  I have just been complaining about the lack of factual or reliable information in this series of posts-- I don't see how I've said anything that's particularly "liberal" in the Rush Limbaugh sense that it seems to be used on this thread.  To say the AEI sucks is not necessarily "liberal" or dichotomatic-- it could just be that you think AEI's "experts" are hacks who abuse science and statistics to arrive at the conclusions they believe or are paid to believe. On Environmentalism should look in the mirror to find the source of its troubles. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 23 Responses

  • Are you kidding?

    Is it really free-thinking environmentalism to read American Enterprise Institute material?  That's like reading Focus on the Family to learn about gay lifestyles.  I know what AEI has to say, and I know why they say it-- for that reason I consider them a poor reference choice in serious policy discussions.  

    Can you find real experts that support your points rather than relying on the conservative noise machine?  It's hard enough to find science that isn't compromised by funding sources, why waste time reading political material dressed up as academia?  You are haemorrhaging credibility for both you and Grist.On Environmentalism should look in the mirror to find the source of its troubles. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 23 Responses

  • Next!

    I've been reading Grist daily for some time and I generally enjoy the thoughtful, well-researched and often good-humored commentary.

    This post has me really questioning if the author is right for Grist.  This post is the sort of thing that the Internet is full of, and I can find it in many locations.  I'm bored with journaloid robots endlessly repeating the need for liberalism to die, especially when the term is being once again bandied about without any tangible connection to reality.  

    It seems odd to attack Vandana Shiva without addressing her main point, that the "miracle" solutions offered by IMF/World Bank -backed projects are more focused on short-term benefit for financiers and corporations than long-term benefit for the people of the countries they seek to "help".  How can one refute Vandana Shiva without mentioning Monsanto or even quoting a reliable source?

    But what is really upsetting about this post is how poorly researched it is.  I followed the references cited by the author in an effort to see if there really was some terrible "enviro-liberalist" group or if there were some know-nothing knee-jerkers who were treating contrarian views as an "unwelcome inconvenience"-- upon checking these references, I found I had wasted my time.  

    The link proving the "enviro-liberalist" cartel was destroying environmentalism actually showed me that the Sierra Club members are 12% Republican, 33% Independent and 44% Democratic.  That's actually pretty balanced for an advocacy group-- do you think the Club For Growth or Focus on the Family sweat the fact that their members are mostly Republican?

    The link proving the "unwelcome inconvenience" was to a book review discussing health hazard scares like Alar-- yawn.  How does this prove that American environmentalists treat facts as enemies, not friends?

    The link to illustrate the benighted American enviro-liberal's ignorance to "far greater crises" showed me that the author is fond of the sort of strawman argument that is often used to change the subject in political discussion.  Should we ignore global warming, air pollution, species extinction or chemical industry byproduct hazards because millions of children die in developing nations due to preventable public health deficiencies?  Moreover, it's quite arguable whether problems with obvious public health solutions are "greater" than the sort of long-term worries environmentalism addresses, or if they are really even related.

    In sum, if a Grist editor or moderator is reading, please contact the author and ask that he raise the level of his discourse.  Because if this is where Grist is going, I'm sure your readers will start looking for something better.On Environmentalism should look in the mirror to find the source of its troubles. posted 4 years, 5 months ago 23 Responses