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Ride the white crony

Speaking of TIME, and of more pressing short-term threats to our environmental health: Check out "How Many More Mike Browns Are Out There?" It is, as you might suspect from the title, an investigation into how many other important government agencies are now headed by Bush administration cronies with no qualifications and no principles aside from their loyalty to Bush.

Scary, scary stuff. And it doesn't even touch on the EPA and FWS and other eco-related agencies, which as we all know are led by and increasingly (as long-timers leave in disgust) staffed with ex-industry lobbyists.

This kind of rot and incompetence at the core of our government is one of those dire threats that environmentalists pay insufficient heed to, what with it not being "environmental." Heed should be paid.

(Anybody get that title reference?)

Hurricanes and global warming, part 548,389

I'm sure everybody's sick of reading about it by now, but if not, TIME has a cover story on whether global warming is responsible for the recent hurricane damage.

After going on and on about how mixed and controversial and ambiguous the science is, it concludes:

In Washington successive administrations have ignored greenhouse warnings, piling up environmental debt the way we have been piling up fiscal debt. The problem is, when it comes to the atmosphere, there's no such thing as creative accounting. If we don't bring our climate ledgers back into balance, the climate will surely do it for us.

This is certainly a valid perspective, but it seems basically unconnected to what came before it. Global warming may do many bad things over the long haul, but raising average hurricane wind speeds from 100mph to 105mph doesn't really seem like one that's well-suited for the kind of rabble-rousing everyone is trying to use it for.

McMansions on the wane?

This NYT article on the alleged leveling off of new home sizes is a rather mild ray of hope given where we need to get, but it's worth reading. I found this bit particularly amusing:

In less populous areas, builders of large houses are derided for despoiling the natural environment. Arthur Spiegel, who is retired from the import-export business, is building a 10,000-square-foot house in Lake Placid, N.Y., in the Adirondacks. The hilltop house has brought protests from the Residents' Committee to Protect the Adirondacks, and construction has been halted by local building authorities.

Mr. Spiegel said that the house "is only 6,500 square feet, unless you count the basement," and that it's the right size for his extended family to gather in for ski vacations.

A strategy of fear

Good essay by Ira Chernus over on TomDispatch. It's about fear, and the recent attempts by anti-Bush forces to use the fear frame -- "he's not keeping us safe" -- to topple the administration. It's an effective short-term tactic, he says, but perhaps a bad long-term strategy.

We'll never be safe if we make safety our ultimate goal. We'll be safe only if we let safety be a by-product of a society working together to improve life for everyone.

The best way to be secure is to imagine a genuine politics of hope. Imagine. Unfortunately, when John Lennon said, "It's easy if you try," he was quite wrong. After six decades of our national insecurity state, it's incredibly hard. But it's an effort that anti-Bush forces ought to make. The alternative is, however inadvertently, to reinforce the politics of fear that Bush and his kind thrive on. The belief that danger is everywhere -- that we must have leaders whose great task is to keep us safe -- is the one great danger we really do need to protect ourselves against.

The implications for how greens approach global warming are, I trust, obvious.

We’ll Always Have Parish

Louisiana faces massive trash and toxics cleanups New Orleans’ ecological recovery is likely to be both complex and lengthy. State environmental officials say Hurricane Katrina left around 22 million tons of debris in southeast Louisiana, 12 million of it in Orleans Parish. The ginormous load of trash ranges from organics like downed trees and rotting […]

David Helvarg sends a dispatch from the hurricane-ravaged South

David Helvarg is president of the Blue Frontier Campaign, which originally published this article. He is also author of the forthcoming, revised Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America’s Ocean Wilderness (Sierra Club, 2006) and 50 Simple Ways to Save the Ocean (Inner Ocean, 2006). Thursday, 29 Sep 2005 NEW ORLEANS, La. The smell of New Orleans […]

Personal conservation habits will never be enough

I'm not sure if NYT's Elisabeth Bumiller intended to write a piece of sly satire with this story on Bush's conservation efforts, but it's brilliant nonetheless.

You may recall that last week Bush called on Americans to conserve energy by driving less, turning off the lights, etc. He instructed federal gov't agencies to "cut back on nonessential travel and also encouraged them to carpool, telecommute and use public transportation."

The ironies here are rich and multifarious, but let us first quote at length from Bumiller's piece, which is just too delicious:

Meanwhile, members of the administration were not especially responsive last week to questions about their personal conservation strategies.

When asked by e-mail what he was doing to conserve, Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, hit "reply" and asked, "What are you doing to conserve?"

Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education, said that she was avoiding nonessential travel because "I'm working so much that I don't have time to go anywhere personally."

Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman's spokesman did not say what Mr. Bodman was doing personally, although he did say that Mr. Bodman had asked employees to actually read the president's conservation directive.

Back at the White House, it was unclear how many people, if any, had turned in their parking passes for Metro rides. But there was one incentive: "You can get it back - it's like squatters' rights," said Trent Duffy, the deputy White House press secretary. "You don't have to give up parking permanently."

I find Mr. Bodman's efforts particularly heroic. Getting low-level gov't employees to actually read a memo from the boss!

But on a more serious and wonky note:

The U.K. is trying a huge toll-road pilot project

Here's something definitely worth watching: The UK is considering a massive pilot project to make drivers pay to use the roads. And not just on a few select roads -- the system would effectively turn every street and highway in Great Britain into a toll road. (Here's a link -- but the article is subscription only. Sorry.)

Tolls would vary based on the kind of road, the number of miles driven, and the time of day; it would cost more to use the most congested roads during rush hour, say, than an uncongested road in the middle of the night. This sort of system -- sometimes called "value pricing" -- is a much better bargain than it seems at first blush. It simultaneously cuts congestion, saves fuel, reduces accident risks, and, perhaps most importantly, relieves some of the pressure to build new roads -- an expense that only seems to grow more costly with time.

As a side benefit, this sort of system would make it far easier for insurance companies to offer Pay As You Drive car insurance. That's a big benefit to people who don't drive much -- since they drive less, they'll pay less, and will stop subsidizing people who rack up both big mileage and big accident risks.

The basic technology underpinning value pricing isn't far-fetched at all -- in fact, mobile Global Positioning Systems are already available as an option for new cars, as well as in some rentals, and their cost will only go down over time. The Puget Sound Regional Council has experimented for years with a small-scale value pricing scheme. That said, there are still all sorts of potential technical kinks to be worked out before the system can be adopted more widely -- which makes a big UK pilot project all the more valuable.

Ag subsidies

I've long thought that massive U.S. agricultural subsidies are a disaster -- environmentally, economically, socially, [your adverb here].

Over on the Environmental Economics blog, an expert (Prof. Bruce Gardner) discusses the issue in a somewhat more nuanced way, but doesn't say anything to dissuade me.

Alfredo Quarto, head of Mangrove Action Project, answers questions

Alfredo Quarto. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I am executive director and cofounder of the Mangrove Action Project. What does your organization do? MAP is dedicated to reversing the degradation of mangrove-forest ecosystems worldwide. We promote the rights of local coastal peoples, including fishers and farmers, and encourage community-based, sustainable management of coastal […]