Apart from all his other corruption, I thought Rove worked for the American people and was paid by your and my taxes.

So in whose twisted reality is it acceptable that he regularly conducted public business using an RNC email account?

It's very unfortunate that Nordhaus and Shellenberger find it necessary or desirable to spend so much time worrying about those annoying environmentalists.

The authors should be offended that people who care about the natural world are narrowly pigeon-holed as "environmentalists," to be regarded as just another kook-fringe special interest group.

That's the crux of the matter: it's important that people are educated about the world they live in. Over the course of human history, as people came to understand the world -- how blood functions in the human body, for example -- it became important to make that knowledge widely known. We teach people how to avoid spreading diseases. We use satellites to warn people of oncoming hurricanes.

But also today, kids all over this country don't have a clue where their breakfast comes from, nor do they have a clue about the incredible history of human progress.

Our ancestors have been exploiting the planet's natural resources for a variety of reasons throughout history -- they cut down the forests of ancient Europe to feed the furnaces which made the iron swords of Rome -- but their exploitation was on a much smaller scale than that of modern industrialized societies.

Now the stakes are much higher. We have the ability to do great things, to provide amazing cures, but what a pity that Pfizer, for example, holds the patent on that technology and has no intention of *giving* that medicine to their fellow man for anything like a fair price.

I'm sorry your article was so lacking in so many ways. It spent far too much energy bashing environmentalists (as the government dismantles 40 years of environmental policy progress), and far too little on constructive ideas.

Sincerely,

John Horn

Thanks Salon for the enjoyable interview with Pinker and Goldstein. However, I can't help but think that we wouldn't find it necessary to have such wide-ranging discussions of whether religion and science should be compared had not the extreme right taken control of the government in 2000. Religion is being imposed on science, and I for one find it tedious that brilliant scientists have to waste their time discussing the views of power-hungry fundamentalist Christians.

I think religion may naturally spring from human self-awareness of mortality and history. And it would be wonderful if our spiritual values were tied to our respect for the natural world. But that isn't the case with the culture we live in.

Throughout history, various ancient cultures held beliefs and practiced rituals that now seem bizarre or foolish to us. In my opinion, too many modern religions have a great deal of 'evolving' to do before their demands deserve to be addressed seriously.

JH

Time desperately needs to ignore the criticism of Klein, and make the fiasco go away -- because we're going into a critical election cycle and they undoubtedly have plans to slip many more slurs against the Dems under the radar.

Glenn, FDL, Kos etc. are crimping their style, big time. Expect to see more attacks on bloggers very soon.