Gregg Edmund Easterbrook (born March 3, 1953) is an American writer and a contributing editor of both The New Republic and The Atlantic Monthly. He has authored ten books (six nonfiction, one of humor, and three literary novels), and writes for op-ed pages, magazines, and journals.
Early life and education Gregg Easterbrook was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of George Easterbrook, a dentist, and Vimy Hoover Easterbrook, a teacher. Easterbrook attended Kenmore West High School in Tonawanda, New York. He has a bachelor's degree in political science from Colorado College and a master's in journalism from Northwestern University.
Career In 1979, Easterbrook became an editor of The Washington Monthly.Kuczynski, Alex. "Changing of the Guard at the Washington Monthly", The New York Times (October 16, 2000). In 1981, he joined The Atlantic as a staff writer, later becoming national correspondent; since 1988, he has been a contributing editor.
Easterbrook has been a political columnist for Reuters, a senior editor and then contributing editor to The New Republic, and a fellow in economic studies and then in governance studies at the Brookings Institution (that fellowship lasted for nine years up until 2011). He has lectured at the Aspen Institute and Chautauqua Institution, and spoken at many colleges.
Easterbrook's journalistic style has been characterized as "hyper-logical" and he himself as "a thoughtful, deliberate, and precise journalist ... a polymath and a quick study."Shafer, Jack. "Blogosmear". Slate. October 20, 2003. His areas of interest include environmental policy, global warming, space policy, social science research, Christian theology, and sports — especially professional football. In 2017, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Football column Easterbrook writes the eclectic football column "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" (TMQ), originally published by Slate in 2000, and then on ESPN.com starting in 2002. TMQ was published for two weeks on the independent website Football Outsiders, and then by NFL.com, moving back to ESPN.com prior to the 2006 season. The column relocated to the New York Times in 2015, then to The Weekly Standard in 2017.Hayes, Stephen. "Tuesday Morning Quarterback to Relaunch at The Weekly Standard" , The Weekly Standard (August 15, 2017). The column went on hiatus for the 2019 season and resumed with the 2023 season, as a newsletter.
Fans of the TMQ column include journalist Chuck Todd who has described it as "the best and most compelling sports column anywhere".Leonhardt, David. "T.M.Q. Joins The Upshot", The New York Times (September 15, 2015). Detractors include Drew Magary (then an editor at the website Deadspin) who said of one Easterbrook column that his thesis lacks "any basis in reality".
A Moment on the Earth Easterbrook wrote the book A Moment on the Earth (1995), subtitled "the coming age of environmental optimism," which presaged Bjørn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist, first published in Danish three years later; Easterbrook argued that many environmental indicators, with the notable exception of greenhouse gas production, are positive.Doyle, Timothy and McEachern, Doug. Environment and Politics, p. 5 (Routledge, 2007). He called the environmental movement "among the most welcome social developments of the twentieth century," but criticized environmentalists who promoted what he saw as overly pessimistic views that did not accept signs of improvement and progress.Samuelson, Robert. The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement, p. 283 (Random House, 2011).
A Moment on the Earth proved to be very controversial, especially among environmentalists. Easterbrook was accused of mischaracterizing data concerning environmental health, using faulty logic, and being overly optimistic.Watkins, T. H. "In the company of scolds", Issues in Science and Technology (Summer 1995).Hertsgaard, Mark. Earth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future, p. 293 (Random House 2009). Other reviewers, like Michael Specter in The New York Times, had praise for the book's efforts to raise positive points in the debate over environmental policy.Specter, Michael (April 23, 1995). "Earth Day '95; not that hard being green ". New York Times.
Norman Borlaug, one of the most important figures in the Green Revolution, was the subject of an admiring Easterbrook article in 1997,Easterbrook, Gregg. "Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity – 97.01". The Atlantic. January 1, 1997. Retrieved 2011-11-12. and again in 2009 marking Borlaug's passing.Easterbrook, Gregg. "The Man Who Defused the 'Population Bomb'", The Wall Street Journal (September 16, 2009). Both articles said that Borlaug had disproved the earlier dire predictions of Paul R. Ehrlich, author of the 1968 book The Population Bomb. Ehrlich has severely criticized Easterbrook's 1995 book A Moment on the Earth.Ehrlich, Paul and Ehrlich, Anne. Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future, pp. 74, 110, 111, 136, 146, 147, 198, 217, 223, 227, 315 (Island Press, 1998).
Until 2006, Easterbrook was skeptical about whether global warming was a serious manmade problem, pointing out several times that even the National Academy of Sciences had expressed doubt about whether global warming was caused by humans.Easterbrook, Gregg. "Finally Feeling the Heat". New York Times. May 24, 2006. He publicly modified his position in 2006 as a result of scientific developments.Rolston, Holmes. A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth, p. 6 (Routledge, 2012).Milloy, Steven. "Global Warming Skeptic Claims Environmental Conversion", Fox News (May 25, 2006).Horner, Christopher. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming: And Environmentalism, p. 48 (Regnery Publishing 2007). Easterbrook wrote:
[T]he science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous. As an environmental commentator, I have a long record of opposing alarmism. But based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert. Once global-warming science was too uncertain to form the basis of policy decisions — and this was hardly just the contention of oil executives. ... Clearly, the question called for more research. That research is now in, and it shows a strong scientific consensus that an artificially warming world is a real phenomenon posing real danger. ...
He says that greenhouse gas emissions must be curbed in order to win the fight against climate change.Easterbrook, Gregg. "Case Closed: The Debate about Global Warming Is Over ", Brookings Institution (June 2006): "The United States needs to start now with mandatory greenhouse gas reductions not out of guilt or shame, but because it is a fight we can win." Easterbrook anticipates that climate change could benefit some regions, even while causing drastic problems elsewhere.McDonald, Bryan. Food Security, p. 72 (Polity, 2010).
Other books Easterbrook has written three novels: This Magic Moment (1986), The Here and Now (2002) and The Leading Indicators (2012). This Magic Moment is a love story as well as a philosophical work about the meaning of life.See, Carolyn. "Book Review: A Love Story to Fall in Love With", Los Angeles Times (February 2, 1987). The second novel (The Here and Now) was called "moving" by both the New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times,"The Leading Indicators, Gregg Easterbrook, Macmillan Publishers". Retrieved March 23, 2014. and tells a "satisfying tale of disillusionment and redemption" in the opinion of the San Francisco Chronicle.Nawrocki, Jim. "REVIEWS IN BRIEF / The Here and Now", The San Francisco Chronicle (December 8, 2002). According to Kirkus Reviews, The Leading Indicators provides social commentary in the form of literary fiction, filtering "leveraged buyouts, derivatives marketing and multimillion-dollar CEO bonuses through the lens of one ... family.""THE LEADING INDICATORS by Gregg Easterbrook", Kirkus Reviews (October 1, 2012). Retrieved March 24, 2014.
Among his nonfiction books, Beside Still Waters (1998) is a work of Christian theology, discussing whether religion matters as much as it did before we gained so much knowledge about ourselves and the world.Galloway, Paul. "In Search of Common Ground", Chicago Tribune (December 25, 1998). The book Tuesday Morning Quarterback (2001) — not to be confused with his similar column of the same name — uses haiku and humor to analyze pro football.
Another of Easterbrook's books, focusing on social science, is The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse (2003), which explores people's perception of their own well-being. The book cites statistical data indicating that Americans are better off in terms of material goods and amount of free time but are not happier than before. Easterbrook argues that this has occurred due to choice anxiety (too many decisions to make) and abundance denial (not realizing how well we are doing).Towers, Sheryl. Seeds of Success: 17 Ways to Nurture the Greatness Within You, pp. 202-203 (Pelican Publishing, 2013). His proposed remedy is to make our lives more meaningful by doing good while living well.Will, George. One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation, p. 174-176 (Random House 2009).
His book Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mach Speed (2009) asserts that globalization has only just begun and is a good thing to look forward to.Woolridge, Adrian. "The Best is Yet to Come", Wall Street Journal (December 28, 2009). Another book, The King of Sports: Football's Impact on America (2013) says that American football in many ways reflects the cultural contradictions of the United States.Littlefield, Bill. "’The King of Sports’ by Gregg Easterbrook", Boston Globe (October 10, 2013).
Other activities and areas of interest Easterbrook was a longtime critic of the Space Shuttle program.Easterbrook, Gregg. "Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty ". Washington Monthly. April 1980. After the Challenger disaster in 1986, his prescience made him a frequent commentator on space issues. He has also been critical of the International Space Station, because of its expense and the feasibility of conducting the same experiments on Earth instead of in orbit.Jones, Chris. Out of Orbit: The Incredible True Story of Three Astronauts Who Were Hundreds of Miles Above Earth When They Lost Their Ride Home, p. 210 (Random House 2011). Easterbrook has called a proposed crewed mission to Mars "ridiculously impractical",Cozic, Charles. Space Exploration: Opposing Viewpoints, p. 88 (Greenhaven Press 1992). and has written that the rationale for a proposed permanent base on the Moon is closely tied to pork barrel politics.Bennett, James. The Doomsday Lobby: Hype and Panic from Sputniks, Martians, and Marauding Meteors, p. 179 (Springer, 2010).Easterbrook, Gregg. "Moon Baseless: NASA can't explain why we need a lunar colony". Slate. December 8, 2006.Easterbrook, Gregg. "The Sky is Falling." The Atlantic. June 2008. He has supported other NASA projects such as using uncrewed space probes and protecting Earth from asteroids.Easterbrook, Gregg. "How NASA Screwed up (And Four Ways to Fix It)". Wired. May 22, 2007.