Articles by Lisa Hymas

Romney admin hires columnist to tout its environmental policies

Paying journalists to shill for Republican policies -- it's not just for Bushies anymore!

The admin of Mitt Romney, Massachusetts' GOP governor, will fork over $10,000 to a Boston Herald op-ed columnist to promote its environmental policies, The Boston Globe (gleefully) reports.

Dems and Republicans buy different kinds of cars; guess who likes big American SUVs?

You could probably guess that Prius drivers tend to be Democrats and Hummer drivers tend to be Republicans. But that's just the tip of the iceberg on car-and-driver political connections, writes John Tierney in The New York Times, summarizing new market research that I find both fascinating and hilarious.  

Jaguars, Land Rovers, and Jeep Grand Cherokees are very "Republican" vehicles. Volvos are the most "Democratic" cars, followed by Subarus and Hyundais. (Funny comment from Slate columnist Mickey Kaus: "Subaru is the new Volvo --that is, it is what Volvos used to be: trusty, rugged, inexpensive, unpretentious, performs well, maybe a bit ugly. You don't buy it because you want to show you have money; you buy it because you have college-professor values.")

Evangelical enviros leery of associating with, uh, enviros

Richard Cizik, head of the National Association of Evangelicals, is heavily hawking the notion of "creation care" these days.  (That would be God-flavored environmentalism, for those not in the know.)

Three weeks ago, he chatted up the concept with NPR's Scott Simon (whom I wholly adore, but that's a topic for another post).  

This past weekend, he got his mug and his pitch in The New York Times Magazine, via a Q&A with Deborah Solomon.  An excerpt:  

Q: What is wrong with [the] term [environmentalism]?

A: It's not the term. It's the environmentalists themselves. I was recently speaking with the leadership of the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation, and I told them, ''Gentlemen, I respect you, but at this point don't plan on any formal collaborations.''

Q: Why? Because they lean to the left?

A: Environmentalists have a bad reputation among evangelical Christians for four reasons. One, they rely on big-government solutions. Two, their alliance with population-control movements. Three, they keep kooky religious company.

Q: What is your idea of a kooky religion?

A: Some environmentalists are pantheists who believe creation itself is holy, not the Creator.

Q: And what's No. 4?

A: There's a certain gloom and doom about environmentalists. They tend to prophecies of doom that don't happen. Look at the movie "The Day After Tomorrow," in which New York City freezes over.

The evangelicals don't want to play with the enviros, and -- sad, but true -- that's probably smart strategizing. The Christian right already knows how to get Bush's attention, and Rove's devotion. Can any green groups say the same?

The seal massacre, in its full gory

I'm an environmentalist, not an animal-rights activist. Sometimes the two labels go hand-in-hand; sometimes they clash. Personally, I place a priority on healthy ecosystems (including the survival of whole species in their native habitat) over an individual animal's right to exist no matter where it may find itself.

So from that vantage point, the fracas over Canada's annual seal hunt doesn't seem to me to be an "environmental" issue, if we're pigeonholing. Seals, as I understand it, are not endangered.

But, trust me, you don't have to attach any activist label to yourself at all to be revolted and horror-struck by the hunt. The International Fund for Animal Welfare is posting new video footage daily of the mass killing -- and, despite the fact that some of it is set to cheesy, melodramatic music, the images of young seals being bludgeoned and skinned are stomach-churning and heart-breaking. And infuriating. Steel yourself and take a look. "Highlights from 2004 hunt" (shouldn't that be lowlights?), which you can access after registering, are particularly gruesome and illustrative.

As The Guardian notes, this year's particularly large hunt is being justified in part by the claim that seals are eating too many fish, wholly ignoring the fact that the Canadian government has long sanctioned unsustainable fishing practices. Yet another example of humans pushing a species to the brink, then using its scarcity as an excuse to massacre its natural predators. That's a fucked-up cycle.