The problem I have with the name isn't that it seems to refer to an editorial board when there isn't one. It's that it's confusing. People see it and think, "The editorial board of what?"

I wish I could share your thoughts with others, but I can't get past the name "The Editorial Board." My friends read publications that have editorial boards, so I don't know what to make of the title. Feels embarrassing.

The lyrics are a first person narrative by a total asshole, and the music - including the melody for the lyrics - creates a wise, understanding, and compassionate view of him. Very literary, as usual for Steely Dan.

I've been keeping quiet about my views, and trying to find a way out of them, because of the good sense of arguments from people like Rebecca Solnit and Genevieve Gunther, who counsel hopeful activism and warn against defeatism. But you can be radical and talk about solutions. Definitely.

The solution is too painful to contemplate, unless you're someone who already has nothing to lose. I can shorthand it by saying I passionately wish Derrick Jensen were not a TERF, because it so compromises his ability to lead in today's world. Other than than the trans thing, he's right.

I can see that what made it easy to misinterpret me back then is the fact that my life far from exemplifies what I believe about this stuff. I live the life of an upper middle class person in a wealthy country. I do some things to mitigate my impact, but I'm still an example of the problem.

Eliminating the rich (or, let's say, extreme wealth) can be thought of as a solution if you consider the majority of people in wealthy countries as making up the body of the rich... So yes, I think corporations are not the problem. The problem is us.

The main driver of the current mass extinction, so far, is land use. Climate change is beginning to emerge as a big accelerator, but remove it from the picture and we're still on a trajectory of destroying the planet.

That way of thinking might have math that works if you limit the problem to climate change and keeping warming below 2 degrees. But that disregards the other effects of centuries of civilizational conquest of nature. Climate change is not the primary cause of the current mass extinction.

I was focusing on a kind of wishful thinking: that the problem is rich people's consumption. Force an end to that and you solve the problem and improve everyone's life in the process. Or force an end to bad corporate behavior and we can all somehow continue to enjoy the fruits of our supply chains.