Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>There has recently been a great deal of debate on the list about the
>United States's environmental record, particularly in contrast to that of
>Europe. I thought it might be interesting to point out the superb NY
>Times article contrasting the two, at:
>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/17/weekinreview/17EAST.html
>Greg Easterbrook, the author, is a liberal environmentalist who normally
>writes for The New Republic.
Um. Hum. I don't have time (since I'm leaving on break tomorrow, and have
been offlist for a week due to a wrangle with the phone company) to
really get started on this, but I think I should warn you now that
Easterbrook was one of the folks used as an example of a psuedoscientific
"whitewasher" in my Environmental Politics class. He has a real
reputation for "journalistic" environmentalism and seriously bending the
facts, if not breaking 'em outright. He's a supporter of creation science
and, to top things off, he's not even a scientist. He's a journalist
with, as far as I know, no science background.
Stuff from a quick search on the web includes a very detailed review of
the mistakes in Easterbrook's book "A Moment On Earth":
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/pubs/Reports/a_easterbrk.html
And a blurb called "Another Easterbrook Donnybrook" about an article he
wrote for the Times last year:
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/heatbeat/thisjustin062300.stm#easterbroo
k
Which starts with "Notorious environmental gadfly Gregg Easterbrook,
author of A Moment on the Earth, wins this month's Heat Beat award for
worst climate news item for a New York Times op-ed he wrote criticizing
the report as excessively pessimistic and essentially political. Many of
his points echo those already made by industry critics and scientific
contrarians, who are largely mistaken."
I'm not trying to spoil the party or divert the issue here, but the name
immediately caught my attention because Easterbrook is so notorious for
his misstatements in environmentalist circles. I'm not saying he didn't
make some good points, but the guy has a bad history, so take him with a
grain of salt or three.
Kat Feete
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In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
- Terry Pratchett
