Articles by Kit Stolz

How to be Cary Grant at an enviro party

Want to keep the enviro party going? Tired of being labeled a Gloomy Gus? Need to say something light and charming to keep that blonde giving you sultry looks from walking away?

Here are a couple of charming Cary Grant-ish items to keep the conversation light and frothy:

After the Garden

On Neil Young's fairly great Living With War Today site, check out the release of his new video, based on the song "After the Garden."

To me the song sounds like a raucous thirty-years-later revisioning of the enviro classic "Back to the Garden," by Young's old friend Joni Mitchell, but Neil says the song was inspired by An Inconvenient Truth.

Also on the site is the video of the very first run through from this year's raging "The Restless Consumer," the toughest, angriest song Young has recorded in years -- with the loudest guitar to prove it.

Capitalism v. environmentalism: a poll

Don Boudreaux, an economist, argues that doing nothing is the best policy for global warming.

As David, biodiversivist, Tim Lambert, and ThinkProgress point out, this argument has a lot of screws loose. (ThinkProgress also has a picture of Boudreaux, who looks slightly insane. He is also, by sheerest chance, with the Cato Institute, which according to a book by two University of Colorado law school scholars, "receives most of its financial support from entrepreneurs, securities and commodities traders, and corporations such as oil and gas companies, Federal Express, and Philip Morris that abhor government regulation.")

Just for a moment, let's ignore the whiff of prostitution. Let's ignore the alarming changes that global warming is expected to bring to climate, and the worsening of drought, floods, forest insect pests, hurricanes, species extinctions, among other aspects of life on earth.

Let's focus instead on the politics of the claim.

Finding hope in the world today

Worried about global warming? The acidification of our oceans? D4 (the highest-known level) droughts in the U.S. today? The idea that palm oil biodiesel might be worse than fossil fuels? A Republican plan to rewrite the Official Secrets Act to make talking to the press about government foul-ups a crime?

Well, you have reason to worry. But not to despair, as environmental writer and hero Barry Lopez points out in a terrific interview with Christian Miller in the latest issue of the Georgia Review: