Gregg Easterbrook

Gregg Easterbrook's birographical note states that he is "a senior editor of The New Republic, a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly, and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. [1]

In a blog entry, Easterbook, railing against violent Hollywood films, invoked anti-Semitic sterotypes to complain about the involvement of Disney with the film 'Kill Bill': "Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. ... Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence?," he wrote. [2]

In Toxic Sludge is Good For You, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton wrote:

...the Earth Day 1995 release of A Moment On The Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism, a 745-page exercise in sophistry by Gregg Easterbrook, seemed like dirt in the face of the losing green lobbyists. "Cancel your plans for doomsday, planet earth is alive and well," screamed the book's full page New York Times advertisement. Easterbrook's one-sided and factually deformed tract promoted his pollyannish doctrine of "ecorealism." While defensively proclaiming himself a liberal and an environmentalist, he provided the PR greenwashers with their best manifesto to date, written by an "objective" journalist.

They noted that "Easterbrook's own mother died of breast cancer after working in the notorious Hooker Chemical plant that produced the toxic wastes buried at Love canal, yet A moment on the Earth claims that all major environmental crises are virtually solved or never really existed in the first place."

"Easterbrook's naïveté showed," they wrote, "as he publicly pleaded with industry to call off its lobbyists' assault on environmental regulations. 'Has all the apparent progress in the chemical industry been merely a public relations ploy?' Easterbook wondered with apparently genuine consternation."

Gregg Easterbrook, the author of A Moment on the Earth, concludes that the acts of individuals are the root of many environmental problems. He wrote in the New York Times magazine, "Though environmental orthodoxy holds that Third World deforestation is caused by rapacious clear-cutters and ruthless cattle barons, penniless peasants seeking fuel wood may be the greatest threat to our forests." He conveniently fails to mention that "penniless peasants" are forced to colonize rainforests and cut down trees for firewood after being driven from their traditional lands by "rapacious clear-cutters and ruthless cattle barons."

(Toxic Sludge is Good For You, 132f)

In January 2001 the Smith Richardson Foundation made a grant of $67,500 to the Brookings Institution for Easterbrook to research and write a book Is Life Getting Better?. Media Transparency noted that the foundation describes the project as for a book "that will assess whether the quality of life in America is improving. He will analyze data on social and economic indicators, such as crime rates, living standards, health outcomes, and environmental quality, and consider some of the normative questions of how quality of life is defined." [3]

• Board of Advisors, Society of Environmental Journalists

Books

• Gregg Easterbrook, A Moment on the Earth: the coming age of environmental optimism, Viking, 1995. ISBN 0670839833 (Hardback) ISBN 0140154515 (Paperback)
• Gregg Easterbrook, The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, Random House, November 2003. ISBN 0679463038

Contact details

Website: http://www.greggeasterbrook.com/

External links

• Gregg Easterbrook, "Bio, undated, accessed April 2005.
• Gregg Easterbrook, "Take out the gore and Kill Bill is an episode of "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers", Easterblog, October 13, 2003.