Our guest blogger is journalist and author Paulina Borsook.
The June 2008 issue of Wired magazine, which counsels “rethinking everything you ever learned about being green” (with an implicit message of “don’t listen to the pieties of the left”), and has a forward by Wired co-founder Louis Rossetto, harkens back to the bad old days of its libertarian anti-progressive politics.
When Wired magazine first hit the scene fifteen years ago in June 1993, part of its gestalt was a kind of world-turned-upside-down saucy contrarianism. Information technology is sexy! And more indirectly, pious humorless liberals are repressive and not on the side of change! I should know, as I was in its early days the magazine’s in-house critic/loyal opposition.
And rather like a Rockette brought out of retirement to kick up her heels at the senior center follies, I’ll weigh in once again on the politics of Wired. It would be too tedious to argue with all ten of Wired’s inconvenient mistruths, so let me take on a typical example, “Screw Organic“:
The path to virtue, we all know, begins with organics. Meat, milk, fruit, veggies — organic products are good for our bodies and good for the planet. Except when they’re not good for the planet.
Even accepting the claim that only “cutting carbon” matters in dealing with global warming, the Wired author’s argument is nonsensical: Read more
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