The editors at Wired magazine stirred up some commentary with their 15th anniversary cover story, Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green. Some of us thought it was dominated by too many breezy clichés, and others took it more seriously. Seriously wise. Or seriously deluded.
Author Michael Shellenberger wrote Wired Calls for the Death of Environmentalism that’s worth your time, including, of course the comments. And Dave Roberts, over at Grist had some things to say, too, under the headline: Tired.
The Daily Kos Environmentalists can be found here.
ANIMALS
perky mcjuggs reported on Alarming Declines in Animal Populations!: "According to a joint study released today by the Zoological Society of London, in conjunction with the World Wildlife Fund and the Global Footprint Network, animal populations are declining at historic rates since 1970 and - it's our fault. Tracking about 1,500 species, the report shows the devastating impact of humanity as species populations have plummeted by almost a third in the 35 years to 2005. Measured were populations of land, ocean and freshwater ecosystems."
Qshio gave us the skinny on why Sarah Palin Hates Polar Bears and Wants Them to Die: "Yes, she's on many McCain veep shortlists, yes she's a charming, affable, and talented politician, and yes she looks sweet and innocent, like a perky librarian (are there perky librarians?), but Alaska's governor Sarah Palin has a dark side colder than the icy tundra which she oversees."
In a parody, Richieville found a solution to two problems at once in Arctic Drilling Continues – Polar Bears To Get a Cut: "Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne sought to answer critics of expanded drilling in Arctic wilderness areas by announcing a new oil revenue profit-sharing plan. The plan, to go into effect May 21, mandates that 1.5 percent of all proceeds from Alaska North Shore oil sales be deposited into an account under the name, ‘polar bears.’ ‘This plan gives the bears a financial stake in the further exploitation of their habitat,’ Mr. Kempthorne said in a statement released today. ‘We get to plunder the environment for oil and they get a steady flow of cash. It's a win-win situation.’"
Nothing to be light-hearted about in matthew fogarty’s said call to action, Idaho will slaughter 428 wolves this year unless you help: "I want to make a plea for people of conscience to support a federal lawsuit by 12 prominent conservation groups to challenge the federal governments delisting of gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act. These groups need our financial support to succeed at this lawsuit and prevent the slaughter of hundreds of wolves this year alone. This decision leaves the fate of the wolves in the northern Rockies in the hands of myopic and irresponsible state agencies in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. These state agencies are all but owned by wealthy incredibly influential hunting and ranching lobbies who could not care less about the fate of wolves, except to see to it that they are persecuted right back into near extinction. This year alone the Idaho Fish and Game agency has agreed to allow 428 wolves to be killed, most by hunting."
lineatus was on hand for another Dawn Chorus Birdblog: Big Sur (education vacation): "Since many of us will be enjoying the long weekend, this is a sort of vacation edition of Dawn Chorus. I just got back from a week of studying molt patterns in passerines and other smaller birds. Most of the other participants were biologists; a few were volunteer passerine banders. I felt a bit like a bio-groupie, wanting to learn a bit more about some birds who I haven't spent much time with."
matching mole took us a little farther afield in Birds, education, ecotourism and conservation in Ecuador: "I first traveled to Ecuador in July 2004. Some colleagues of mine had been taking students down for a couple of years for a biology field course and they asked me to join them, bringing students from my own institution. We visited two sites in the Amazon basin (locally called the Oriente). Since then I have been back twice more, once with a course and once on vacation. Ecuador is one of the most biodiverse countries on earth. I believe in ranks 4th in terms of recorded bird species with almost 1600 which is about twice the number for North America north of Mexico."
POLITICOS
rossir wrote a Dear John letter, Dear John: We Have an Energy Crisis!: "John McCain has been trying to distance himself from Bush, and last week he went to the headquarters of the Danish wind turbine company, Vestas, to make a ‘major speech’ on global warming. In his speech, he said: ‘I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges.’ When it comes to energy, though, he already has."
Jon Stewart's take on the speech was, said A Siegel, among the best looks and takedowns of Halfway McCain's disdain for committing to doing what is necessary. In Mr President: The cuddles stop here!!!!!, we get the comedian’s "takes on McCain's declaration that " I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges." The image to go with it, the hug image here. And, Stewart's comment: ‘Mr President. The cuddles stop here.’ McCain suggests that we look to Arctic life for lessons about how to act and think."
InThe King of Special Interest Senators: Praises Rising Gas Prices, alpolitics promoted a candidate to beat "Jeff Sessions, a member of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources defends the oil companies. Jeff Sessions is also personally heavily invested in the oil and gas industry. Load up the campaign coffers energy and gas buddies. http://www.opensecrets.org/... Let's do our best to send home this disaster. We have a good alternative in Vivian Davis Figures and I urge for your financial support."
nolawi gaveFive Reasons: Why Obama should get the "Green Vote" over McCain?: McCain is taking the "Green Vote" seriously enough that his campaign is providing McCains Eco- Friendly items on his website. In my opinion, McCain is not just using the environment to persuade voters to look at him as a green candidate but also to distance himself from Bush. The "Green" brand might also make him seem more contemporary and modern to young voters that might have reservations about Obama."
Obama's Appalachia problem: It's not white people. It's coal. according to ninshubur: "In this election season 2008, the coal mining industry has given almost twice as much to Hillary Clinton’s campaign as it has to Barack Obama’s. Those contributions came almost all in the form of individual contributions. Most of that money came, as it does every election season, from two states: Kentucky and West Virginia. In those states, coal giants such as Arch and Massey Energy have been able to bust unions, pollute streams and relocate entire neighborhoods. They conduct massive public relations campaigns to fill the impoverished people dependent on the coal industry with fear that they'll lose their jobs. They have also controlled elections, and will try to do so again. So it’s important, heading toward the November election, to correctly diagnose the problem in those states. Barack Obama doesn’t have a hard-working people problem. He doesn’t have a white-people problem. He doesn’t even have a hard-working-rural-poor-backwater-undereducated-white-people problem. Barack Obama has a coal problem."
FOOD, AGRICULTURE & HORTICULTURE
Asinus Asinum Fricat offered a lesson in Foraging: Living Off the Fat of the Land: "Noun 1. foraging - the act of searching for food and provisions. The prices of staple foods such as rice could stay high for the next three years, hindering the battle against poverty, a top World Bank official said Tuesday. I personally think this may be the understatement of the year. ... Welcome to world of foraging, a lost art for most as more and more convenient stores and supermarket chains crop up in neighborhoods with dizzying regularity. Try this for a change: take your family to the nearest forest, gather wild produce and see if you can bring home the bacon, so to speak."
He also took note of A Ray of Hope: G8 to Start Tackling Global Food Crisis: "Imagine having to go without food for days on end as roughly a billion people do on a regular basis. Imagine having to put your kids to sleep at night hungry. How did we get to this point and what did the various governments in the world do to alleviate the hunger and the suffering? Not much, as most States still spend a large portion of their GDP, doggedly, in defense, shoring up armies and armament as if there's no tomorrow, still drawing invisible battle lines on the earth, water and space. However, there is movement at the station, to paraphrase Banjo Paterson."
creweeny asked if Can someone defend the farm bill?: "Increases in agricultural subsidies in a time of sharply rising agricultural prices don't seem to make a lot of sense since the farmers are doing perfectly well and there's no compelling interest in making farmers rich. What's the excuse for buying high and selling low to domestic users of agricultural products at a massive loss to the US government? By artificially increasing the world supply of many crops we mess with the price system and screw up the agricultural systems of poorer countries throughout the world."
seanarama wrote that You Are on a Collision Course With an Oil/Food Crisis: "Bottom line: The world wants to eat like big, fat Americans. You are now competing for the wheat in your Cheerios with a family in Beijing. OF COURSE prices are going to go higher. Now, the good thing about agriculture is we can always grow another crop. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that world cereal production may jump a record 2.6% this year as farmers boost plantings. In other words, supply is fine. Except ... wait a minute ... what's that other report I read in March? The one that said world cereal demand is growing at 3% a year. In short: While prices may moderate and pull back from time to time, the general trend in agricultural commodities should remain higher."
Several Diarists took note of a teensy little problem with the farm bill. JG in MD was first up with Farm Bill: Passed, Vetoed, Passed . . . Uh-Oh: "The Farm Bill was vetoed by the President and has been promptly overridden by the House and is expected to be overridden by the Senate. A firm expression of the intent of the Congress, soon to be the law of the land, right? Not so much. It seems that the copy of the farm bill that was sent to the president and vetoed was missing Title III and nobody caught it."
Bigger problems than parliamentary snafus were on Dave Donelson’s mind in Pigs On The Farm Bill: "The Farm Bill embodies the "pour something into every trough" approach to legislation that has ballooned our deficit, undercut our currency, and make our government the unabashed tool of special interests. I'm very happy to see that Hispanic farm workers are supposed to benefit from this bill – except there seems to be a remarkable lack of detail on how that is supposed to happen aside from a vague trickle-down promise that Latino farmers will get some of the $1.6 billion allocated for fresh fruit and vegetable production and field workers will have a better life once the checks for pesticide research funds are cashed by the chemical companies. Sorry – I ain't drinking that Kool-Aid. The school lunch program and food stamps aside, If the entire list of recipients of this largess were every published, we'd find that 99.999% of it is going into corporate pockets."
Frankenoid was bright and early with another installment in Saturday Morning Garden Blogging Vol. 4.14: "The heat early on in the week really got my compost bin cooking, though. On Monday it registered 165°, the hottest I've ever gotten a compost pile to cook. And the tree peony bloomed. I've been afraid we'd get hit with hail before the bud opened, but I lucked out. Gawd, it's such a fantastic flower!"
possum took time off the campaign trail for his own Garden Photo Blog: "Longwood Gardens is locaed on a former DuPont estate in nearby PA. The site encompasses 1050 acres making for a spectacular space in which to display various gardens, woodlands, and meadows. Follow over the fold for LOTS of pictures and share the day on a possum trek through the garden."
ENERGY
swungnoteswondered whether Brazil could be THAT MUCH SMARTER THAN AMERICA?: "Brazil is one of the largest democracies in the world. It operates the same way as the United States, as a republic. Brazil’s 190 million residents now enjoy the very comfortable position of being OPEC-free, or energy-independent. (Notice how US politicians mouth that phrase as a distant, unachievable dream ... ?) Brazilians couldn’t care less what the Saudi Sheiks do with their oil production decisions: increase drilling or decrease? Brazilians don’t care. Imported oil previously accounted for more than 70% of the country's oil needs, but Brazil became energy independent in 2006."
Crafty Screenwriting took a dim view of the Cheney-Bush administration’s apparent call to Let's Help Saudi Arabia Build Nuclear Reactors!: "Remember how President Bush begged the Saudis to pump more oil, and they said, wellll, maybe 300,000 barrels more? Were you wondering what we offered in return? According to this White House fact sheet dated May 16th, the US is committing to pave the way for Saudi Arabia's access to safe, reliable fuel sources for energy reactors and demonstrate Saudi leadership as a positive non-proliferation model for the region. In other words, we'll be selling them nuclear fuel. Does that seem like a good idea?"
In Talking With Iran? Traitorous. Giving Away Uranium? Environmentalism!, Atomic Punk was a good deal harsher: "Lost in this weekend's blather about whether it's traitorous to meet with the head of a foreign government was what should have been the biggest story of the year: President Bush's failed hat-in-hand "request" for Saudi Arabia to produce more oil. That was embarrassing enough. But what he did in return for the failed promise undermines any claim the Republican party has to being ‘Friend to Israel.’ Although Saudi Arabia denied his request for more oil, Bush went ahead and left the little housewarming gift he brought anyway... Enriched uranium. (Now who exactly is the ‘traitor’ in this scenario?)"
MaverickModerate pointed to Two Technologies That Could End the Energy Crisis (Video): "There is no other choice, we MUST innovate our way out of it. The good news is, we actually have the technology already to do just that. There are two technologies which hold the promise of permanently and completely ending our dependence on fossil fuels. These are not "pie in the sky" theoretical ideas, these are cold, hard, tested, and functioning technologies that exist right now. The first of these is clean-burning algal biodiesel and ethanol. The humble microorganism that grows in every pond is actually a significant oil producer. Algae is capable of producing up to 100 times as much oil per acre as corn or soybeans. ... While the problem is being attacked from the fuel side, there is also another technology which promises to solve the automotive transport facet of the problem as well. It's called the Ultra Capacitor, and a new breakthrough technology has now made the prospect of a practical highway speed electric vehicle with a significant range a reality."
Jerome a Paris, who caught some ridicule a few years back here at Daily Kos when he first started talking about $100-a-barrel oil dropped in for a pair of Diaries in his series Countdown to $200 oil (5) - supply side follies: "Not Enough Oil Is Lament of BP, Exxon on Spending. Never have so many oil and gas companies spent so much to produce so little. Heh. Let me take you through the real problems of the oil companies. And Countdown to $200 oil (6) - Oil jumps $10 in a day and Congress ... wants to sue OPEC?: "First, go have a look at this page. This is the full list of futures for oil, ie how much it costs you today to purchase a barrel of oil to be delivered at the date you want in the future. While spot prices jumped by $2 yesterday, the longest-dated futures jumped by a whopping $9 (with more to come today). This is HUGE."
He also told us that Energy will be the defining political issue this year. And the next. And the next. And...: "It's hard to get excited by yet another headline about yet another record high for oil prices (although this week's run from $126 to above $135 is quite spectacular), but it is going to become increasingly hard to avoid energy headlines in general, as the topic finally becomes, as some of us have predicted for a while, the defining one of our epoch. (Yes, I know all about torture, Guantanamo, FISA, the Supreme Court, Habeas Corpus, health care, et al. Still. Energy will overwhelm all this)."
Another of our resident energy gurus, A Siegel, had similar view in THE Progressive Crises: Global Warming and Peak Oil: "Without better energy policies starting now, the future could be bleak economically for decades to come with the impending strike of Peak Oil. Amid recessions and depressions, what happens to mental health programs? What happens to music in the classrooms? Training programs for economically disadvantaged among us? Will there be funding for these and other progressive causes? I doubt it. Don’t you?"
alefnot wrote Carbon taxes, $130 oil, and fiscal policy: "The price for a barrel of oil broke through $130 today, a 30% increase in under 5 months. It will fluctuate some, but those fluctuations will be around an ever increasing trend. I hope everyone here has been thinking about how you'll be coping with energy prices in 1 year, 2 years, 5 years. It's not just the direct price of oil, of course."
Jerome took on the Gray Lady in NYT breathtakingly clueless on nuclear energy: "The New York Times has a stupendously bad article about the ‘rebirth’ of nuclear energy in Italy: Italy Embraces Nuclear Power, it turns the declarations of one right-wing politician into a big policy change, complete with breathless assertions about Europe and energy that are so bad that they are not even wrong... A lesson for you kossacks is that, while you're rightly critical of what the NYT and other papers write about US politics, you tend to believe a lot more what they write about European politics or economies - when it's just as slanted. Please be as skeptical about non-US topics, they are no less ideological or partial there."
A more positive take on some Times coverage was highlighted in davidsirota’s NYT: Enviro Populism Threatens the GOP: "During the conservative uprising of the 1980s, Republicans exploited environmental issues and Land Politics to create a wedge between those who want the planet protected and those who are employed in the natural resource industry. Call it the spotted owl-versus-jobs wedge. Conrad Burns, for instance, was originally elected to the U.S. Senate from Montana on a right-wing populist campaign that railed on environmentalists who supposedly wanted to eliminate logging and mining jobs. But now the pendulum has swung in the other direction, with Democrats using their pro-environment positions to wedge apart a national Republican Party that has put itself in direct conflict with its local grassroots base. Throughout the West, Democrats are starting to compete and win in oil and gas producing regions. In Western Colorado, for instance, natural gas production is booming - as are Democrats prospects."
TheTrucker opined about The Oil Bubble: "This will be the last bubble but no more are needed. Having concentrated wealth into the top 1% of the people on earth we have economic feudalism where the fight is over the ownership of the world's oil supplies. The price of oil is not a reflection of supply and demand in anything even remotely resembling a ‘free market.’ It is the hoarding and withholding of non-produced fixed supply resources in pursuit of power. The ownership of oil is more concentrated than it has ever been in that the unregulated but enforced futures markets make it entirely possible and legal to exercise sufficient control over supplies to wage economic warfare for control of the world.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve ought not to be capped, wrote Justanothernyer in Ending Purchase of Oil for the SPR, a Bipartisan Error: "The SPR can be looked at as a form of insurance. In that case, the real question is this: Is the SPR sufficiently large or not? Currently, the SPR has about 702 million barrels of oil in it, which is enough to fully replace US imports for a period of about 40 days. It is possible to imagine scenarios with a reasonable liklihood of occuring which require more oil than this to be replaced? The answer to this is clearly yes. The correct way for the government to deal with this is to create a scenario analysis, estimate the needed amount of oil and add a safety margin. That is the amount that should be in the SPR. (I don't know what amount this should be ..."
New Sweden asked readers to Vote For The Best Sustainable Energy Video At Facebook: "The Bourdeaux Energy Colloquium is holding a video contest at it’s facebook group. They show 10 videos around the world with innovative techniques towards sustainable energy. These videos are up for contest. I urge you to 1) join this facebook group 2) see the videos from these innovators and entrepreneurs and 3) vote for the best video."
Oil executives’ remarks before a congressional committee drew some counter-remarks from several Diarists.
In Big Oil in front of Congress, happy in MA said: "The fine gentlemen who work so hard to make sure we can pay $4/gallon for gas were in front of the Senate today rationalizing and defending their huge profits and excessive salaries, well, at least those who will admit what their salaries are, that is."
In Big Oil Execs testify in Congress - Again..., Frank Costello wrote: "So with rising oil prices, you'd think that the oil execs would have some compassion for us consumers...yeah right."
NeverStopTheProgress mocked the execs in "It's NOT the Markets; It IS You." Tell Congress To Break Up With Big Oil: "This week, big oil executives went before the Senate Judiciary Committee to justify their windfall ‘earnings’ despite the rising costs of oil compounding the already suffering economy. Surprise, surprise, the theme of the execs' testimony was, ‘It's not us, it's the markets.’ Over and over, CEO after CEO cited allegiance to supply and demand as justification for their record profits despite average Americans' sacrifices at the pumps. In fact, J. Stephen Simon, executive VP of Exxon Mobil, had the audacity to say that high earnings are needed ‘in the current up cycle’ to pay for investments in the long term when profits will be down. When have big oil profits ever been down?"
Meanwhile in the real world.....$135 oil, lamented xrepub: "Talking heads on Business channels are saying this is 'psychological' - some are saying this is partly due to decreased $US values. But is it really? While some of the recent run-up may be due to traders covering positions and others looking for some protection against inflation, it seems clear that the upward trend will be with us for some time. Playing politics and trying to lay blame isn't going to solve the problem. Reality is that we ARE running out and production is NOT keeping pace with demand."
Tangent101 investigated The Oil Bubble: "There are significant fears about the parabolic increase in the cost of oil. Even now that demand has started to drop, prices continue to climb and some believe that climb isn't going to end. But there are two reasons why prices aren't dropping for gasoline even as demand has declined."
TheTrucker explored the idea of a Windfall Profits Tax: "There seems to be some controversy over the idea of a Windfall Profits Tax (WPT) on oil company profits. There are those who erroneously
claim that all taxes are paid by consumers and that corporations will just increase their prices and ‘pass the tax’ to the people that buy their stuff. This basic tenet of faith, subscribed to by many, is in an ‘elastic market,’ total bunk. But in the case of oil companies there is
some small grain of truth to it."
A Siegel decried Energy Dumb House Action ...: "Ranking up there with the Energy Dumb concept of a Gas Tax Holiday, the US House of Representatives passed (on a 324-84 vote) a bill to authorize the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and conspiring to set crude oil prices. The Gas Price Relief for Consumers Act seeks to apply US antitrust laws to OPEC members, just as they apply for US companies. Oh, this sounds so good. Sounds good, perhaps, but worse than meaningless."
Swanlooked at The end of oil: "Whenever I think of the onset of peak oil production, I sort of half-imagine the onset of some sci-fi, Mad Max state of things. I'd bet a lot of other people do, too. But after some more thinking about it, I don't think push is going to come to shove in that way, and I think there is not even a need to worry about that occurring."
The BBQ Chicken Madness discussed SOAE - Wind Power in a new energy series: "As an engineer by trade, and as someone who has been following these topics for years, it elates me to see others interested and working to advance an alternative energy agenda. ... It is in this vein that I set out to write this ‘State of Alternative Energy’ series. I intend to cover several alternative energy technologies, where they stand in development, where they are going, and how they may impact our world. In this second article, I’d like to talk about the quiet energy monster that's been building steam for literally hundreds of years: Wind Power."
davidwalters walked us through California's Wind Energy Problems: "At the end of April the California Independent System Operator issued it's ‘2008 Summer Loads and Resources Operations Preparedness Assessment,’ an extensive overview issued every year in the Spring to acess the load and generation requirements for high, hot, days of summer in the Golden State. Among other things, it presents a concise (albeit about 30 pages long, but all online), factual, graph-laden report on the issues the CAISO has to deal with in meeting our summer demands. One can learn an awful lot of how a grid function and what are every conceivable issue when maintaining the grid over a large region, especially as it relates to generation, generation sources and capacity factors. An entire university course could be taught around this document. It would be a multi-disciplinary course, reaching across collage quads to encompass finances, economics, engineering, meteorology, hydrology, and English writing skills."
Although he’d claimed to have just about given up on us, NNadir made A Comment On Whether Nuclear Energy Can Save Your Pathetic Butt: "The energy demands of world's citizens will not managed by reason - the time for that is well past. Instead, the energy supply/cost/impact issues will be controlled by catastrophe. The catastrophe, I think, is already underway. Nuclear energy need not be able to establish that it can displace everything else to be superior to all other options for displacing fossil fuels, none of which, in any case, can come in time since climate change is now irreversible and catastrophic. In the last 20 years of my life, every time I mentioned nuclear energy, I have been met with grief and negativity and incredulity by people who know far less about the subject than I do. In fact, I have often been confronted by people who know nothing at all about the subject, all of whom feel the right nonetheless to criticize me for my hard work in attempting to understand all aspects of nuclear energy."
tinhat7 responded with Nuclear Energy Will Not Save Your Pathetic Butt: "Despite a growing chorus of individuals seeking to rehabilitate nuclear energy as some kind of panacea for global warming, I wish to warn my fellow Kossacks to not be taken in by this revisionist nonsense. Nuclear power is not the answer to our energy future and to suggest that it will be is, to put it kindly, not very ‘intelectually vigorous.’ Indeed, to suggest that nuclear power should be part of a comprehensive energy policy one must ignore huge unsolved problems with nuke plants and the fact that no insurance company will touch them. One must also ignore the fact that this energy is not renewable and one must ignore promising renewable alternative energy solutions."
: A Siegel told us about a new campaign to counter industry propaganda in Coal IS Dirty!!!: "Introducing the Clean Coal Body Slam. Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBloghas put together an amazing team with a clear (not clean) agenda. ... The Coal Industry is putting $10s of millions into truthiness campaigns (including paying for Presidential primary debates) to convince people that "Clean Coal" is the path to the future and that the promise of Carbon Capture and Sequestration in the future (sort of like fusion has always been around the corner) makes it acceptable (or even desirable) to accept new coal plants today because tomorrow (or the day after, or the day after that ...) coal will somehow be clean. Well, the free ride for that truthiness campaign might be over."
Victor wondered what the point was in Energy crisis: Shale oil blocked by Dems?: "As many of you know, the Green River formation in Colorado has more oil in its shale deposits than the entire world's proven and unproven reserves of liquid crude (plus canadian tar sands reserves). Yet, a week and a half ago, Senate Appropriations Committee refused to lift the moratorium on the Colorado shale exploration. The vote was strictly along party lines. I understand that there's a question of the carbon release from the development of shale oil, and that the aforementioned committee cited the need to further investigate environmental impact of oil shale development as the reason for such refusal. Still, we are in deep trouble energy-wise, and it would seem prudent to take this issue seriously."
POLLUTION & REGULATION
NeverStopTheProgress reported the words of an EPA Scientist: ‘Do Not Trust the EPA To Protect Your Environment’: "More than half of the 1,600 EPA staff scientists who filled out a detailed questionnaire indicated some level of political interference in their work. Given the Bush administration's history of interfering with government agencies' work for political purposes, the House Oversight Committee issued a subpoena of documents detailing contacts between the agency and the White House. To date, the EPA failed to comply with the subpoena."
greendem punctuated this news with a Diary about EPA Administrator Stonewalls Congress: "Johnson Stonewalls House Committee Investigating White House Meddling with EPA Decisions: The top U.S. environmental regulator had planned to allow California rules regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from motor vehicles to go forward in some form but reversed course after meeting with the White House, according to a document released on Monday by a congressional committee."
chigh asked What has the Army Corps of Engineers accomplished?: "Hurricane season begins June 1 and Mother Nature is screaming. First, the cyclone in Burma, fires in FL, tornados all over the place and now an earthquake in China, I feel nothing but dread. Can we be protected? Not entirely, but the Corp could at least try to accomplish what the Dutch have mastered."
TRANSPORTATION
Going EV #4: The battery revolution will not be televised wrote Rei : "The makers of the batteries for today's modern EVs have much to be proud of. A little over a decade ago, the best EVs on the market ran on lead-acid batteries (a technology so primitive that Thomas Edison didn't find it suitable for the EVs of his era) and nickel-cadmium cells (toxic enough to make lead-acid look clean). Today's battery upstarts like A123 (lithium phosphate) and AltairNano (lithium titanate) are already becoming superstars in the EV community with their long-life, high performance cells. That said, their achievements pale in comparison to what's coming our way."
dukewhitey offered some Mythbusting Electric Cars: "Everyone’s favorite superhero, Jamie Hyneman from the Discovery Channel Show, ‘Mythbusters’ takes on the myth that Electric cars suck in a new Popular Mechanics piece."
admill arrived belatedly with Bike to Work Week/Day: "Earlier this week our office was abuzz one day when gas prices jumped from $3.75 to $3.95. Yet during the summer in our office of about 400 employees I usually see 2, maybe 3 bikes parked in the back lobby including mine. The reasons for using a bike for transportation are obvious: Money saved on fuel/auto upkeep; Exercise; eco-friendly; reduced dependance on foreign oil; it's fun. Yet the excuses are just as numerous: more and more people live long distances from where they work; Americans general aversion to phycial activity; fear of danger from traffic; inconvenient/lack of facilities; lack of social acceptance/fear of ridicule; don't have a bike/have a bike
but it's a POS."
xysea said we should Stop Using So Much Gas! (?): "Is this possible? Yes. Just use less. Keep tires properly inflated, oil changed, fuel filter clean. Oh? And just. use. less. Group errands. Give your car a 'Sabbath'. Proclaim each Sunday as 'no driving day'. Carpool to church, if you go. A lot of them have vans that will pick you up, if you express an interest, especially for the elderly, poor and disabled. Make a personal commitment and stick to it; every little bit you don't use helps keep the price down, and/or under control. Do you need that SUV? Could you get by with a vehicle that gets 21mpg instead of 11mpg? Borrow a friend's truck if you need to transport large items or pick up plants, shrubs, etc."
The Overhead Wire dug into the Public Transit Section to Boxer Amendment on LW Climate Bill: "Grants for New Public Transit Projects – This is a really cool part. 30% of the $171 Billion expected would go to fixed guideway construction (Heavy Rail, Light Rail, Streetcar, Commuter Rail, and True BRT). It's subject to the same criteria as the new starts program which gives out funding for transit projects. Now we have a little bit to worry about here if John McCain and Mary Peters stick around because they are going to water down the definition fixed guideway as much as they can. Earlier this year they tried to make hot lanes (toll road lanes) eligible for new starts transit funding as "fixed guideway". This is also pennies for transit which is annoying. $1.026 Billion per year for fixed guideway projects is the basic idea but its really not that much."
save gas with a website and a GPS? was willep’s "idea for psuedo public transport for places and routes that don't have or can't have public transport... like a lot of this country. Use technology (GPS and net) to turn the idea of carpooling into a safe and flexible, incentive driven community. Does this make sense? Is anyone trying this? ...It is not an alternative to owning a car or having a good public transport system, but it might help save a few bucks and lower the carbon foot print a bit."
In the weekly Kossacks Under 35 series, DemocraticLuntz explored Mass Transit: "While everybody benefits from a mass transit system, it's a more pressing issue for young people.Of course, that's not to say that even younger Americans use mass transit regularly; in 2006, only 5% of Americans got to work using mass transit. There are several reasons so few Americans use mass transit. The biggest reason, though, is that we haven't built it."
futurebird talked about pushing Congress to build some of that missing transit in Action Alert: High Gas Prices? Let's fund TRAINS!: "H.R. 6003, the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, was just approved by the Railroads Subcommittee and it will help Amtrak a lot. So, we need to get on this right away to keep the momentum going! It will be much easier to get that limited floor time and ensure passage of the bill if there are more co-sponsors. Currently, there are only 41 cosponsors. But, the bill needs 218 or more cosponsors to get ‘floor time -- so you should ask your representative to step up to the plate and be a cosponsor! Tell them it's for the environment, for giving people alternatives with fuel costs so high, and for helping Amtrak continue to grow despite Bush's efforts to shut it down for the past 8 years. Ridership has been going up in recent years so it's time to start funding passenger trains again!"
Ken Avidor gave us the links to hear James Howard Kunstler Talks About Personal Rapid Transit: "In this excerpt, James Howard Kunstler, Author of the Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency and other books about transportation, land use and sustainability, talks about Personal Rapid Transit (PRT)"
Gleefully, The Lighthouse Keeper announced Now THIS is overdue: SUVs on 'Endangered': "There's an ‘echo bubble’ from the housing market, which reflects an equally reckless pattern of consumption by Americans and a reckless lack of policies by the government over the last number of years. For some time, I've felt that personal SUV use is an ethical and even patriotic issue. I personally think, given the geo-political situation, it's downright un-American to drive those things without a compelling personal reason. Hey, I like appropriating right-wing memes for our use! It's fun. :) I've been a seriously angry driver for some time over the huge collection of sport-utility vehicles on our nation's roads. Well now, finally, people are starting to get a clue."
MINING & RESOURCE WARS
DWG reported on Pebble Mine: The biggest environmental threat in Alaska: "Everyone has heard about ANWR. It is so well known that I do not have spell out the acronym. Ever heard of the Pebble Mine Project? Probably not. The major environmental organizations have done an extremely poor job of publicizing this disaster in the making. Pebble Mine is worse than anything the oil thugs want to do in ANWR and it is in the permitting stage, making it a critical issue in terms of time and public awareness. Please join me for an introduction to the proposed Pebble Mine Project."
route66 wrote that Trouble brewing in the Arctic as Russians seek oil: "Vladimir Putin has just kicked things up a notch....The battle for ‘ownership’ of the polar oil reserves has accelerated with the disclosure that Russia has sent a fleet of nuclear-powered ice breakers into the Arctic. The Russian ice breakers patrol huge areas of the frozen ocean for months on end, cutting through ice up to 8ft thick. There are thought to be eight in the region, dwarfing the British and American fleets, neither of which includes nuclear-powered ships."
WATER & OTHER RESOURCES
Asinus Asinum Fricat provided another Water News May 08 Roundup: "People use lots of water for drinking, cooking and washing, but even more for producing things such as food, paper, cotton clothes, etc. The water footprint of an individual, business or nation is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual, business or nation. Now you too can figure out your water footprint using the calculator at waterfootprint.org. Additionally, they have a gallery of commonly consumed products and how much water it takes to produce them and case studies of water footprints of specific countries like China and Israel."
Nathan Jaco suggested a Solution to the Environmental Crisis: Awareness and Resistance: "The corporate toadies in the US government and their mouthpieces in the media are leading a frantic push to open up much of America’s public lands to oil and gas development. Many of these lands are critical habitats for many species as well as areas of rich biodiversity. I heard eminent academic and founder of modern sociobiology, E.O. Wilson, say that there is a rule in biology which posits that for every tenfold increase in the physical size of a habitat, the number of species which reside in that habitat doubles."
GREEN PHILOSOPHY & ACTIVISM
Evolve or die: Can we shed our moral primitivism before it’s too late? was the hefty introduction to Jason Miller ’s "Interview with By Dr. Steve Best, whom the Diarist describes as (our ‘czar’ of animal and earth liberation at Cyrano’s Journal Online)."
patrickz played benign sockpuppet for his wife’s essay On Ecological Activism: "It happened almost a month ago, as I was sitting out on the lawn in front of one of my college's many plain, modern and depressing edifices, eating lunch, and reading P.J. O'Rourke on the Wealth of Nations with a dandelion tucked behind my ear. The book is fun; it's interesting. O'Rourke's conservatism comes out often, but most of the time I can brush it off. It's nothing personal, he's a humorist. Then I come across a certain phrase. I can't remember the precise context (something snarking about wetlands, I think), but he used the term 'ecological activists'. Huh. I've heard this term before, of course, and not just from the other side of the aisle. Environmentalists often like to use the term, too, but it annoys me. It grates. It picks at the vaguely obsessive-compulsive part of my brain that's disgusted with the rest of my brain. Full of righteous ire, I set off to make a sassy comment about the difference between ecologists and environmentalists and can't-an-educated-man-like-O'Rourke-tell-the-difference."
Eternal Hope explored The Voluntary Simplicity Movement: "With the continuing rapid rise in gas prices, more and more people are joining the Voluntary Simplicity Movement, where they sell all they have and live a simple life. This suggests that people are getting more and more disillusioned with the current wave of materialism that has permeated the Republican Party and that the chickens have come home to roost. In the same way that the 1960's was a reaction to the mindless conformism of the era, this could be a reaction to the rampant materialism of the Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush years, where the notion was that greed is good."
GLOBAL WARMING
A Siegel wondered if Alaska in a State in Denial?: "When it comes to Global Warming impacts, Alaska is on the front lines. It is also on the front lines of continued Republican efforts to confront reality directly ... and deny it! Several Republican members of the Alaska State Legislature drove through, almost beneath the radar scope, a $2 million funding for a conference on Global Warming. This conference, however, is not intended to be an honest discussion about Global Warming's impacts on Alaska and what Alaskans might do in the face of these impacts (both in terms of changed energy/other usage to reduce contributions to Global Warming and amelioration measures to help Alaska/Alaskans deal with Global Warming). No, instead, it is an effort to put together a lavish environment to fete and give prominence to pseudo-scientists that seek to obfuscate reality and inhibit action to deal with Global Warming."
apsmith elaborated on Global warming and the death of libertarian ideology: "I don’t see a lot of hysteria on my side of this problem. I see a lot of serious-minded people saying we need to put our shoulders to the wheel, find a way to cooperate on a global scale, and switch to new forms of energy production and improved efficiency, most of which can be done with little or no economic cost. As somebody has been saying recently, ‘we can solve it.’ But it has to be we, not 7 billion I’s doing their own thing. And I think that’s what has many of those writing here so fired up. Public goods and the global commons do exist. Deal with it."
gmoke discussed the Methane Cycle: Climate Change: "BBC reports that this year, after nearly a decade of stability, methane in the atmosphere has increased. Both wind and isotope analyses indicate that the source is probably the Arctic wetlands, melting permafrost. "Some stations around the Arctic showed rises of more than double" the global average, 0.5%.
And he looked at Recycled Solar Water, Homeless Sleeping Project: "Veronica Santos and Julia Parreiras from Belo Horizonte, Brazil make solar water purifiers using recycled plastic bottles and snack food bags turned inside out. The mylar bags are concentrators and the bottles are PET plastic, one side painted black to absorb more heat. They found that PET had more UV transmittance and stood up better to long term use. Here's my own recycled solar cooker using snack food (popcorn) bags, a plastic cake box, and a dark saucepan."
Winter Rabbit viewed Climate Disintegration as a Human Rights Issue: "This is an attempt, by using the Eight Stages of Genocide by Gregory H. Stanton, to show how climate change is a human rights issue in our own backyard. The Inuit in Alaska are the ‘canary in the coal mine,’ while the rising sea levels from the melting Arctic ice endanger the coast line of Hawaii. As a measure of awareness and hopefully of prevention, six stages of genocide are given in word only in between quoted materials. The last two stages, extermination and denial, are not cited. Allow me to explain my justification. If and only if the intent to commit genocide could be shown in terms of the state deliberately disallowing outside aid or the state not giving direct necessary aid itself for the sustaining of life, then it should be concluded that that said state willfully used a natural disaster as the extermination stage of genocide and then denied that extermination."
Ken Avidor challenged the Republican Carbon Credit Flim-Flam in Al Gore's Backyard?: "Carbon Angel claims that they are ‘dedicated to life on earth through tax-deductable contributions.’ But, will those contributions really help ‘strike a carbon balance’? The devil is in the details. For instance, one of Carbon Angel's projects is an ‘emerging technology’ proposed by an inventor ‘whose biggest accomplishments are a fire-breathing giant robot and a flying beverage can cooler.’
A Siegel, who has been lambasting the Lieberman-Warner corporate giveaway bill, weighed in Briefly on Boxer's Brief: "Senator Barbara Boxer has released a summary of the Manager's Amendment to the Lieberman-WarnerCoal-Subsidy Act. In the cover letter, Senator Boxer promises many things, including that this will be ‘deficit neutral’ (sadly, not 'reduce the deficit' or putting funds in reserve) and that it follows the very strong advice of scientists, who have told us what needs to be done to avert the catastrophic effects of unchecked global warming. Sadly, the bill does not seem to meet the ‘strong advice of scientists.’"
elishastephens did some math and discovered The solution to global warming is not at hand (or at foot): "Then I decided to think about the story, unlike the editor who published what was certainly a press release from the company which sponsored this event. If 21 bicycle ‘stations’ (more about that below) ridden for three days could power 12,000 homes, then they could power 4,000 homes with one day of riding, and just one bicycle station ridden for a day could power 200 homes for a year! You could power one home for a year with just 7 minutes of riding! ...But, as it turns out, the claim about 12,000 homes is wrong even if 12.9 Mwh were generated by 21 superhuman bicycle riders (each with 20 times the power of Lance Armstrong). The average home uses 500 kilowatt hours of electricity per month, or 6000 Kwh (6 Mwh)/year. So 12.9 Mwh would power not 12,000 homes for a year, but two!!"