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Triumph of the Will-bashing

George Will is peddling a new column about global warming that's just a lame, tired rear-guard set of conservative talking points. Shocking, I know! Still, if you'd like to see it eviscerated, I give you Progress Report:

Could you go without shopping for a year?

MSNBC interviews author Judith Levine, who spent a year avoiding all unnecessary consumerism and just released her new book Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping.

Think you could do it?

The Daily Grist Headline Battle Royale: Match 6

Is it Monday again? It seems just like yesterday we were celebrating "Flame! I Wanna Log Forever's" victory over "Silly Rabbit, Toxics Aren't for Kids!"

So, let's find out which witty headline won last week's rumble ... [drum roll] ... and it's "Freeport Your Mine, and Unrest Will Follow," with 39% of the vote. Damn! I was hoping for "They Got Seoul But They're Not Eco-Soldiers" -- proof that these bouts are not rigged.

Moving on ...

After I revealed that I normally choose one headline from each Daily Grist of a given week, I was informed that this just ain't right. It was explained to me that the Grist headline-generating machine has its good and bad days. Apparently Monday of last week was a good day. Thus, each of the seven Daily Grist headlines from Monday, March 27, is up for contention.

So, here are the nominees:

1. Tiiiiiime Is on Our Side, Yes It Is: Time cover story propels global warming into the mainstream
2. Ebb and Fla.: An interview with Michael Grunwald about his new Everglades book
3. Oh Say, Can You, Seattle?: Seattle commission unveils recommendations for meeting Kyoto goals
4. Oceans Delve: Umbra on measuring ocean temperatures
5. E-Waste Not, E-Want Not: Washington Gov. Gregoire signs far-reaching e-recycling law
6. Garden of Edens: Jason Edens, rural solar advocate, InterActivates
7. Bait and Switchgrass: New coal-powered ethanol plant a sign of things to come

Okay, voting time!

The cult of Chip adds a member

Today brings much news with regard to our Founder and Dear Leader, Chip Giller, seen here passed out on the floor.

First is a long, glowing, and only partially fictional profile from The Seattle Times' Nicole Brodeur. "It's not the Cult of Chip that we're trying to create," he says. Nonsense! Join ... us ...

In even happier news, Chip and his wife Jenny welcomed a healthy baby girl to the world on -- get this -- April 1. But unlike Saturday's Daily Grist, this was no April Fools joke.

No word yet on a name (just decide, you two!). And, much to staff chagrin, no pictures yet.

Regardless, a huge congratulations and much love to Chip, Jenny, and Baby X. All baby gifts can be directed through this page [wink, wink].

You Want a Lease of Me?

Wyoming governor opposes federal drilling leases in national forest Wyoming is plenty bullish on a local natural-gas boom — but Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D) has put his foot down at […]

How’d they do it in the ’70s?

Today, it's a good bet that if you consider yourself an environmentalist, you lean left politically. That's especially true here in D.C. But it wasn't always. Once leaders in both parties fell all over each other competing to be known as champions of the environment.

Recently I had a chance to speak with the former chiefs of staff for both Democrat Ed Muskie and Republican Howard Baker -- the dynamic duo whose early-1970s Senate subcommittee produced the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act, among other landmark environmental laws.

My basic question: How'd ya do it?

Leon Billings, Muskie's staff director, said one thing that didn't grind meaningful action to a halt was waiting indefinitely for more data to roll in: "We know so much more about the science of global warming now than we knew about the science of leaded gasoline and auto emissions in 1970 when we wrote Clean Air Act," he said.

His counterpart, Republican Jim Range, says: "Once we had identified the problem, there was a commitment on both sides of the aisle not to agree on everything, but to agree that you would work together until you had addressed the problem."

In other words, just sitting on your hands wasn't an option.

Let's hope we're fast approaching the day when Washington takes the same approach toward global warming. We can't afford to wait much longer.

An NYT profile of climate modeler Gavin Schmidt

The New York Times makes climate modeling the very essence of urban chic in a glowing profile of Gavin Schmidt, founder of RealClimate. Don't hate him because he's beautiful, people.

Not a helpful turn in the global warming conversation

The "Death of Environmentalism" boys are at it again. In an op-ed piece in the April 1, 2006 New York Times, Nordhaus and Shellenberger argue that we should stop arguing about the causes of global warming and start talking about adaptation.

Environmentalists and their opponents have spent far too much time debating whether global warming is caused by humans, and whether the transition to cleaner energy sources will be good or bad for the economy. Whatever the causes, warming is a genuine risk.

If the earth's temperatures continue to rise, we can expect to face melting glaciers and rising sea levels, warmer ocean temperatures and more intense hurricanes, more frequent droughts and other extreme weather. Is the government ready?

No. Which is why we need a Global Warming Preparedness Act.

My first reaction? It reads remarkably like White House talking points circa 2002, when the U.S. Kyoto delegation tried to shift the conversation from prevention to adaption. You remember how it went: Why squabble over who's to blame? What we should really be doing is looking at how to adapt.

But perhaps -- and this is just supposition here -- the real purpose was a kind of media judo. You know, co-opt your opponent's momentum and use it against them. Under this theory, once people have to go through the scenarios of how to deal with global warming's effects, they'll take it more seriously. If that's the reasoning behind this framing I think it falls down on several points:

• Once you start talking about adaption, you implicitly concede the battle of prevention. It's very hard to go back.
• Who's to say the adaptation scenarios will scare? I guarantee you that should their "Global Warming Preparedness Act" be enacted, we'll see a raft of reports about the benefits of increased temperatures to American agriculture, the boon to the economy from the uptick in the flip-flop and airconditioner industries, etc.

For people still interested in working on prevention, this is an unproductive way to take the conversation.

Our Poverty & the Environment series comes to an end, but our concern doesn’t

The sun sets on our poverty series. Photo: Clipart. There’s something a little odd about ending a series on the subject of poverty — as we at Grist are officially […]

A virtual walking tour through an L.A. neighborhood with activists from Pacoima Beautiful

The tiny community of Pacoima, at the north end of Los Angeles, suffers from nearly every imaginable obstacle to a healthy urban environment. That means, for starters, lead paint, freeway […]