The gross and unsubstantiated generalizations in Goldberg's writing might help philistine conservatives sleep at night, but would have merited a failing grade in freshmen English courses.  With shills like this boob promoting flawed reasoning, one has to wonder if framing will do anything to improve the situation.  

How do you penetrate a fortress mind that is bulwarked with tripe from Fox "News" and the National Review?

You call the bastards on it every time - thanks Dave.

One has to admit that some of what Goldberg said is perfectly valid. Impoverished people will consume their environment to improve their lot in life. Our forest cover is greater, water and air cleaner. I spend time in the forests of the East Coast every summer. Few of those forests could be called tree farms, especially the adirondacks. Last summer I counted eight species of frogs on my hikes. Being a wet year, they were everywhere.

He failed to mention that you need the combination of poverty reduction (wealth) and people concerned about the environment (environmentalists) to get what we have today. Poverty reduction and technology by itself won't save our biodiversity but when combined with people, who love nature, it just might. As he stated, neither the UN nor environmentalists are against poverty reduction. Yet notice, he clearly dislikes environmentalists, the very people who are largely responsible for his forests, clean air and water. That is because the word environmentalist, like other words before it, has taken on a bad connotation. To many, it now invokes images of vegans distributing pamphlets with blood on them (I would not let my daughter handle the one offered to us on Halloween) and others who are convinced that free enterprise is the cause of all of our ills and that we must all return to our hunter gatherer roots and live in a sustainable manner with our ecosystem... all 6.4 billion on us. Many people today concerned about biodiversity shun the label of environmentalist, and that number is growing. Maybe it is time to cut the word loose.

The same thing happened to the word feminist. Many women don't want associated with those who insist that our children must be raised gender neutral in an attempt to create an androgenous society where men and women may look different, but act the same. To many, the word feminist now invokes images of bra burning nipple pierced lesbians (not to say there is anything wrong with that image).

The word overpopulation was crushed years ago. Extremists calling for increasing our death rate, eugenics, and mandatory birth control put the cabash on that word. Today, you can say population resource imbalances, but not overpopulation. NPG changed their name to Population Connection.

Some atheists have tried to lose the word. They now call themselves secular humanists, brights, non-believers, and agnostics.

It doesn't just happen to liberal words. The moral majority changed its name to dodge the negative image as well.

The way Goldberg made light of the report was pathetic and typical. Emphasizing the effects of poverty reduction, ignoring the accomplishments of those concerned about our natural ecosystems (note, I found a way not to use the word). Where is the balance in our world? Where are the people who have accepted the wisdom to be found in both sides of the environmental debate, and what are they going to call themselves?

From an ecological point of view, the fact that "mpoverished people will consume their environment to improve their lot in life" is due to overpopulation (sorry, but that's what it is, regardless of whether you like the word).  As people become more materially wealthy, they consume more, by definition, and thus contribute to more environmental destruction.  What we need to do is greatly reduce human population, not create more ecologically destructive Americans. (And yes, the U.S. is grossly overpopulated, too, just not as bad as some other places.)  Can you explain how causing or allowing people to become mindless consumers will help the Earth?

Re people's dislike of our message, it's not our fault you all can't face the truth!  It's not free enterprise, which is just a symptom, but the discovery of agriculture that began the downward ecological spiral on which we now find ourselves.  Regardless of what you like or dislike, the facts remain that 1) living as a hunter/gatherer is the only natural way to live; agricluture is unnatural and very ecologically destructive, and 2) humans are the only animals that use agriculture to eat.  Every other animal is a hunter, gatherer, scavenger, or some combination of them.

Re forests v. tree farms, 95% of our native forests have been destroyed.  The fact that a relatively tiny portion of them remains intact is nice, but what about, for example, the forests so thick that a squirrel could wald from the east coast to the Great Lakes without touching the ground?  I suggest you look at a before and after map comparing what our forests used to look like before the invasion of Europeans and what they look like now.