Chicken Yoghurt and Max Hastings

A very good contribution to the Trident Replacement debate by yuckily-named blogger Chicken Yoghurt here.

Elsewhere war journalist and commentator Max Hastings ill advisedly ventures into the climate chamge/energy/environmental debate with a Guardian article based on the rather better argued (though not much better) recent Economist editorial piece. Hastings, who confesses to not beeing such an expert "as George Monbiot" proceeds with a series of half truths, distortions and debatable points presented as facts to attack organic food, wind farms and Fair Trade. Like in the Economist article these are set up as straw men - virtually nobody is arguing that all farming can be organic in the near future, or that Fair Trade is the solution to all the problems of the developing world, or that wind energy has got to carry the major burden of energy demand in the UK.

Unfortunately for Mr Hastings a lot of well qualified people working in all these fields read the Guardian and proceed to take his arguments apart point by painful point in the comments section online (it is just a pity that these demolitions could not appear in the print edition where Hastings' musings appeared unchallenged)

The point that we should not take claims of "green-ness" at face value and should question the profiteering of large companies making green/social justice claims is taken, Mr Hastings (though hardly needed making for most of us) - but a better researched and referenced article would be more advisable next time!