A WAPO article reported on a study by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy which found that the greenest car on the road today is the Toyota Prius Prime SE, a plug in hybrid. The car only travels 44 miles on electric before switching to gas but additional factors such as the vehicle’s weight, the size of its battery and its overall efficiency were taken into account. “While a gigantic electric truck weighing thousands of pounds might be better than a gas truck of the same size, both will be outmatched by a smaller, efficient gas vehicle. And the more huge vehicles there are on the road, the harder it will be for the United States to meet its goal of zeroing out emissions by 2050.”
The GreenerCars report analyzes 1,200 cars available in 2024, assessing both the carbon dioxide emissions of the vehicle while it’s on the road and the emissions of manufacturing the car and battery. It also assesses the impact of pollutants beyond carbon dioxide, including nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and particulate matter — all of which can harm human health.
Combining these factors, the authors gave each car a “green score” ranging from 0 to 100. The Toyota Prius Prime received a score of 71, followed by several all-electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf and Mini Cooper SE with scores in the high 60s. The Toyota RAV4 Prime, a plug-in hybrid SUV with 42 miles in range, got a score of 64. One gas hybrid, the Hyundai Elantra Blue, made the list as well — thanks to an efficient design and good mileage. www.washingtonpost.com/...
Bill McKibben writes in his substack The Crucial Years As Winter Melts Away
And yet the changes underway on our planet are now so extreme, and so remarkable, that sometimes we do need to stand back and simply gaze in awe and sadness. At my latitude (43.97 degrees north, or very nearly halfway between the North Pole and the equator) the changes in winter may be the most dramatic signs yet. And the most dramatic in my heart for sure, because winter is the time I love the most.
This year in North America has been about as close as we’ve ever come to a year without a winter—the geological obverse of 1816, the year when an Indonesian volcano put so much sulfur into the air that there was no real northern hemisphere summer. We’re the volcano now, and the gases we produce increase the temperature: it was 70 degrees in Chicago yesterday, in February—which was also the day that the Windy City decided to join other American cities in suing the fossil fuel industry for damages. But that was just one of a hundred heat records broken in the course of the day, from Milwaukee to Dallas (94 degrees). But it wasn’t a single day of heat—it’s been an almost unrelentingly warm winter, with by far the lowest snow coverage for this time of year ever recorded (13.8 percent of the lower 48 as of Monday, compared with an average of more than 40 percent) and with the Great Lakes essentially free of ice.
-snip-
All of which is to say that the impact of the climate crisis is psychological as well as physical. The deepest patterns of our lives—the ways our bodies understand the cycle of the seasons and the progress of time—are now slipping away. The fight to slow the warming of the planet is the fight to save billions of people and millions of species, but it’s also the fight to hold on to profound beauty and profound meaning, not to mention sheer gorgeous powdery magic.
Within the course of a day I can vacillate several times between the horrifying notion of Trump winning in November or (as Thom Hartmann wrote yesterday) stealing the election when the electors go to DC and a calm feeling that Biden’s got this.
We don’t usually write about politics here at KTK, but I can’t stop obsessing the upcoming election and I was really upset about the MSM coverage of the Michigan primary,
Following the results on tv and in the papers, I became incensed when I noticed that the NYT lede story was about the Trump victory with some coverage about the uncommitted vote in the state. Afterall, Obama in 2012 received 11% uncommitted and not much was made of that at the time, as I recall. But then the stakes weren’t as high.There’s much written here about the MSM giving Trump top billing too frequently and I’m at the point now where I really don’t know where to go to get a fair and balanced take on the race.
The 13% of folks who voted uncommitted represents 100,000 dissatisfied people, some of whom I have heard on television sounding quite determined to not support Biden in November if he doesn’t change his position on aid to Israel and push for a permanent ceasefire. Calling Israel’s actions in Gaza “over the top” isn’t going to cut it for these democratic voters. Many of them might just not participate.
Can we afford to lose Michigan?
Plus, as the NYT notes, the uncommitted movement most likely will appear in other upcoming primaries as the group Listen to Michigan is reaching out for support to Minnesota and the state of Washington.
“This is the only option we have to enact democracy in this moment,” said Asma Mohammed, a progressive activist who is among the leaders of a new group called Uncommitted Minnesota. “We are against a Trump presidency, and we also want Biden to be better. If that means pushing him to his limit, that is what it will take.”
WAPO reports:
… many Democrats conceded that the sheer number of people who voted “uncommitted” was a flashing warning sign that the president must change course and rebuild trust with key parts of the Democratic Party if he hopes to win the critical swing state in November. Some said privately that they feared the Biden campaign was significantly underestimating the anger among Arab Americans, Muslims, young voters and people of color over the president’s nearly unwavering support for Israel, whose onslaught in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of almost 30,000 Palestinians.
“Over 100,000 Democratic voters choosing uncommitted and 75 percent of Arab American voters doing so should be a warning that the status quo policies on Gaza are eroding the broad, multiracial, modern Democratic coalition that Obama built,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is a Biden surrogate but disagrees with his Israel policy.
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