– ‘culdesactivism’ — engaging at micro-neighborhood level

A great story about the accidental birth of a grass roots environmental activist and a great new coinage — culdesactivism — from James Glave today in Salon.

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– will environmentalism lead to less drug abuse?

Here’s a great reason not to do drugs — it’s bad for the environment!  And here’s Gawker’s take on the idea:

Yuppie cokeheads, stop snorting massive rails for the sake of the endangered tree frogs! That’s the new anti-drug message coming out of the UK. And it just might work!

Could that be the one thing that really speaks to Western cocaine buyers?

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– the birth of the Eco-Scold. Are the best environmentalists really the most obnoxious?

San Francisco journalist David Curran has an odd article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.  Under the title “Eco Worriers,” Curran describes an environmentally-aware neighbor whom he fears — without having ever spoken to this person.

The simple fact that this neighbor sports a cute license plate (‘ECO BRAT’) on his or her Prius, it appears, sends Curran and the neighbors with whom he does speak into paroxysms of guilt.   “We fear his opinions,” Curran writes, although those opinions seem entirely imagined on his part.

It’s obviously an attempt at humor.  The neighbor stands in as a scold to his conscience whenever Curran does something that is less than environmentally friendly.

Since the neighbor doesn’t appear ever to have actually been a scold, though, the humor falls rather pathetically flat.  But the rhetoric is interesting.

“I’m trying and I want some credit for it,”  seems to what Curran is saying.  Fair enough.  Changing your lifestyle is no easy thing.  But inventing what could be called an eco-scold as a form of self-justification is something else.  As tensions over climate change start to impact political decisions, can we expect this figure to become a rhetorical favorite of anyone who’s seeking to push back against what they perceive as (to coin another term) ‘eco-correctness’ ?

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– all hail Rebecca Solnit

Here at EarthQuaker, we have a lot of time for Rebecca Solnit. She’s a Bay Area neighbor of ours and simply one of the most interesting authors currently writing on the history, mythology, economics, politics and ecology of the American West — and how they all intersect.

But Solnit’s interests, and abilities, range more broadly. As evidence, check out the new issue of Orion. Her feature article on environmentalism and class in America is a essential reading for anyone wishing that environmental preservation could be more successfully pursued in America.

The modern American environmental movement has hobbled itself, Solnit argues, thanks to its puritanical admiration of ‘wilderness’ at the expense of the people who actually live there.

While she rehearses much that’s to regret about the past, Solnit also points to new trends (like environmentalist-rancher coalitions) that suggest how we might secure real, and lasting protection for America’s vast rural hinterlands.

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