Will Hutton: The environment is too important to be left to the green movement | Comment is free | The Observer

The vast majority are unmoved. Worse, many mainstream environmental intellectuals drop rigour when it comes to the environment, climate change and risk. Under the precautionary principle, almost nothing should be done that endangers the climate, just in case the worst scientific warnings are right. The aim should be sustainable development - to grow economically in a way that passes the globe on to the next generation in the same condition in which we found it.

Giddens joins Lawson in dismissing this thinking as wretchedly woolly. Are we really going to risk nothing? This is a refutation of our very risk-taking humanity. In any case, there is little chance of building a consensus over which risks matter and to what degree. Instead, the percentage principle should rule - taking risks in proportion to the probable good and bad outcomes...

Randall Lance: Tax organized stupidity | Gainesville.com | The Gainesville Sun | Gainesville, FL

Perhaps we could tax our anti-environment congressmen, fossil fuel lobbyists and talk radio windbags for delay of game via 40 years of propaganda? Someone will have to pay for moving Miami to higher ground. The same slack minded throwbacks who deny global warming also favored the death and dismemberment of over a half million humans in Iraq. Current cool spells are claimed as proof of a “global warming fraud.” They don’t see melting ice water chilling the seas. They also didn’t see the 10-story stacks of bodies that resulted from their flag waving. They don’t see themselves as corporate industrial pawns.