Here Is Your Slogan & Something Else Here
[Original published in the Atlantic] For decades environmentalists have fought to save our oceans from the perils of overfishing, climate change, and pollution. All noble efforts — but what if environmentalists have it backwards? What if the question is not how to save...
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[Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith] Climate change has arrived in America. What will it mean for your job? Climate change affecting my job? Many people have never even considered the possibility. They have been misled by false assurances like the testimony of Douglas W....
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The Keystone XL pipeline, recently approved by the US State Department and awaiting President Obama’s declaration that it is in the “national interest,” will carry oil that is too dirty for the US government to buy — under legislation signed by George W....
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[Published by Grist Magazine] Stroll by any Whole Foods seafood counter and you will see color-coded fish: Green for fully sustainable, yellow for partially sustainable, and red for fish threatened by overfishing or grown on polluting fish farms. Buy a “green” fish...
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[Original Published by Grist] Throughout history artists have joined forces with political movements to battle injustice and demand a better and more beautiful world. Picasso's "Guernica" captured the horrors of the German bombing of civilians in 1937. "Solidarity Forever," "We Shall Overcome," and "Give Peace a Chance" expressed the optimism and power of the labor, civil rights, and peace movements. Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" embodied the utopian fervor of the French Revolution. Shepard Fairey's Obama "Hope" silkscreen during the 2008 election captured America's yearning for a more visionary politics.
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[Original Posted on Huffington Post] If you listen to right wing commentators, you might think American progressives are leading the charge to protect our planet from climate change. Would that it were so! All around the country, progressives are fighting to make our world a better place to live. In the midst of an ascended right wing and the dominance of corporations over our daily lives, progressives continue to fight for affordable housing, better wages and working conditions, social justice, clean water and many other solutions to the ills that have long plagued their communities. And yes, most of us progressives also support policies to cut greenhouse gasses and thereby reduce climate change.
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[Original Posted on HuffingtonPost.com] I am not an environmentalist. But all I think about these days is the climate crisis. I admit I have arrived late to the party. Only recently have I begun to realize what others have known for decades: The climate crisis is not, at its...
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More than two million American construction workers — nearly one in five — are currently unemployed. Factories that produce building materials are operating at only half their capacity. So when a private company proposes a project that it claims will spur the...
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Brendan Smith is co-founder of Voices for a Sustainable Future and senior fellow at the Progressive Technology Project. His commentary has appeared in The Atlantic, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Nation, CBS News.com, YahooNews and the Baltimore Sun Times. He is a graduate of Cornell law school. 
