Articles by Adam Browning

LA Times can learn a lot from ESPN

I unfortunately did not take Dave Robert's advice, and went ahead and read Jonah Goldberg's vapid op-ed on global warming. I'll leave it to others to say why Goldberg is wrong. I want to discuss why the L.A. Times is wrong.

A year or so ago, ESPN hired Rush Limbaugh to provide color commentary (the irony only became apparent later) during NFL football games. This little experiment ended, as any idiot could have predicted, when Limbaugh made on-air comments that -- how to say this in a balanced way? -- some listeners thought might be racist, and others knew for sure were racist.

Limbaugh's shtick might play well on rightwing hate-radio (though is no less excusable), but no one, including ESPN, should have been surprised when it didn't translate well to a broader audience. An audience with black people, for instance. ESPN endured a firestorm of criticism -- the National Association of Black Journalists said "ESPN's journalistic credibility is at stake" -- and ended up issuing mea culpas and canning Limbaugh.

Ditto Goldberg. His vapid screed might play well over on National Review Online, but the L.A. Times insults the thinking members of its circulation when they publish this kind of horseshit on Earth Day. What's next? Paul Bunyan's ode to lumber on Arbor Day? Will they give Hugh Hefner free rein on National Chastity Day? (Trust me. It's only a matter of time.)

Shame on you, L.A. Times. You insult your readers at your peril.

If by ‘unparalleled’ you mean ‘suicidal and morally indefensible’, then yes, you are correct

The U.S. EPA released a new report on greenhouse gas emissions today.

From the press release, here's EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson:

"The Bush Administration has an unparalleled financial, international and domestic commitment to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions," said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson.

Can't argue with that. And don't get me started on their made-up-metric, "greenhouse gas intensity."

New Jersey to California: You are #2

Like most people, I enjoy mocking New Jersey as a toxic miasmatic wasteland. Yesterday, New Jersey responded by serving me a double portion of shut-the-hell-up. By a 4-0 vote, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities approved one of the most robust renewable-energy standards in the country. By 2020, 20% of the electricity the state's utilities sell must come from renewable resources. And there's more: 2% must come from solar, making New Jersey, on a solar-per-capita basis, the nation's solar leader. Take that, you California hippies.

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.