This week I am, officially anyway, on vacation, spending a week in a condo at the bottom of Mt. Hood, snowboarding by day, soaking in the hot tub by night. Yes: sweet. I will nonetheless be posting occasionally, because, well, I just don’t know how to quit you.
Before I go I want to clear out all the stuff that’s been building up in my browser for, oh, months now. So a link dump it is, and away we go!
This post on Dot Earth about sustainable cities reminded me that I forgot to link to Alex Steffen’s long and characteristically brilliant essay "My other car is a bright green city." It’s about how we obsess on vehicles and pass up the myriad opportunities to change the cities and communities around them. Read it. You will learn something.
Pro-coal Democrat in Kentucky state house gets mocked by the political press; writes bill to ban political press in the state house. C’mon, the guy’s name is "Gooch." He’s not used to being mocked?
Cambridge Energy Research Associates says there will be $7 trillion in investment in clean energy tech by 2030. Speaking of cleantech investment, a prominent cleantech VC says fusion is just around the corner — no, really this time!
This list of 10 things environmentalists should remember is worth reading, though it and the rest of the blog are beset with the tired bashing of DFH stereotypes that seems to generate such auto-titillation for self-styled hard-headed realists. Who is not bored by that stuff by now?
Check out this article on the connection between coal ash and cancer, which appears in the Washington Independent, a newly launched indie media startup that’s trying to save investigative journalism from the decline and fall of the big newspapers. Worth supporting.
A blunt way of saving the remaining rainforests: lots of cash.
I can’t wait for my kids to live through these "sudden shifts." They’re going to be so grateful to my generation.
China is passing us by on clean energy. How come people never talk about this international competition?
Coverage of the Greener Gadgets Conference.
The American denial of global warming, an engaging and highly educational 58-minute talk by historian of science Naomi Oreskes:
I don’t even remember how I came across MassTramAmerica, but there it is in my browser. What do you think?
Over at dKos, Meteor Blades has a long and thoughtful post on the history of modern climate science and politics, tracing from the early mid-century science up to James Hansen’s epochal 1988 testimony and on to today. Fascinating stuff.
Via Sietch Blog, check out Riskometer.org, a fantastic site that offers visual representations of government information on risk, and reinforces the lamentable truth that human beings in industrial society truly suck at assessing what really endangers them.
Here’s how conservative strategist David Frum thinks conservatives can successfully frame an environmental message:
Q: So how does the Republican Party handle an issue like environmentalism without turning into Al Gore Lite?
A: Two ways: The first is the Republican Party has a history that most people don’t know. … You need to remind people of what you’ve done, because the voters don’t see it as their job to remember your achievements, they see it as the party’s job to remind them of its achievements.The second thing is that it is precisely because we are not Al Gore fanatics that this issue is powerful for us. That is to say that we can offer Americans a message that says, "Look, we take this issue seriously, too. But we’re not going to go overboard. We’re going to do what’s necessary, not more." For us, it is purely an issue of good sense, whereas for Gore, it’s a substitute for religion. Or, to put it even more bluntly, "Look, Gore-type environmentalists have been wanting to take your car away for 60 years for whatever reason they can find. If it wasn’t global warming, it would be something else. This is what they have always wanted to do. They have wanted to take away your car. They don’t like suburbs. They want to stop the trend of American life. We are not trying to achieve anything other than a cleaner environment. That’s it. We have a more limited and more rational agenda than they do."
Where would these people be without their bizarre Gore caricature to hate on? Oh, right, hating on some other caricature.
