Here are two items related to climate change that read well next to each other.
One is from a magazine called Tin House—an article by Curtis White skewering the idea of sustainability. A taste:
Read the full article (and admire
Tin House's design).
The other is from the current issue of
—Elizabeth Kolbert gives the Freakonomics guys a well-deserved skewering. Their new book,
SuperFreakonomics, sounds even stupider than their first one.
Kolbert (I can't help pronouncing her last name with a silent "T" as with Stephen Colbert) starts her review with an historical anecdote about how for a while there it looked like horseshit from all the horses used to transport people and goods all around New York City would eventually take over the city:
Times
This anecdote, it turns out, is a curtain-raiser to the Steves' (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, that is) "argument" that we shouldn't fret about climate change, since someone is sure to come up with some kind of technological fix so that we can keep consuming, growing, and using fossil fuels. Their preferred idea is to cool the earth by shooting tons of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere using an 18-mile-long hose (hence the title of Kolbert's review, "Hosed"—if only that could be taken as referring doubly to their idea and the Steve's careers or reputations). And here are two of the skewering bits, one sober, the other light-hearted:
She's probably right, but let's hope she's not about the Steves in particular. Maybe the scorn getting heaped on them for this particular pile they've produced (e.g. here) will hose their reputations permanently.
Read Kolbert's review; read White's article.