Vivienne Westwood is perhaps as well known for her kooky clothes as her off-the-cuff remarks, so when she told Fox News that L.A. would soon disappear at her boutique opening last week, we took it as part of Westwood's general embrace of the environment. The exact quote: "I try to use my voice to tell people of the danger of climate change, we are an endangered species. Within one generation, Los Angeles will be uninhabitable if people don't do something about it."
Of course, Fox News went running for the experts, as if Westwood had a degree in climatology. Come on, now.
Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Richard S. Lindzen remarked, "[This doesn't bear any truths] that I can detect," and Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C. said, "The claims of global warming catastrophe, they are mostly made up."
But don't fear, East Coasters -- Westwood is an equal opportunity offender, geographically. She told W's Editors' Blog:
I don't actually like New York. New York people are a bit stuck up and self important, and think that just the fact that they live in New York makes them better than anybody else. Sometimes there, you feel trapped by the concrete, and for me that means being trapped by the myth of Superman and American foreign policy and all these dreadful things that have done so much harm in the world. There's just so much pressure there; it's not nice. But I love the Met: they've got such an amazing, wonderful collection of Impressionist and Chinese art. I have spent as long as three days in a row just looking at the Met's Chinese art. I really love that.