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How many kids do I have to have to get your attention?

What's up? Usually when I tout procreation, there's no end to the scolding. But my guest post on Sustainablog has generated almost nothing. The Treehuggers were not similarly restrained.

The opportunity costs of not taking mass transit

Anyone who has watched someone pull a bonehead maneuver on the road only to pull up next to the driver and see that he or she is on a cell phone can attest that it's hard to multi-task while driving. And given the uphill battle to get people out of cars and using mass transit, some of the benefits of ditching the car could use some (re)framing. For example:

• Mass transit cuts down on the opportunity cost of transit. It frees the rider up to do anything, from preparing for the day at work to just getting your head together or decompressing after a stressful day, instead of having to be alert and focus on yet another task: navigating rush-hour traffic.
• Mass transit is the logical next step in an industrialized society, since it furthers the division of labor by allocating the task of moving people around to those who are best at it. Not everyone is a great driver.
• Mass transit has none of the overhead costs present in cars.
• You can't sleep and drive across the country at the same time.

Granted, there are some things inherent in driving that are irreplaceable and not transferable to mass transit. There's a certain romance about driving from coast to coast, and a certain excitement that comes from shifting a manual transmission into fourth gear. The majority of driving, though, is neither of these. It's mundane, point-A-to-point-B drudgery through rush-hour traffic, which mass transit can easily match or improve upon.

A report from the scene.

Grist reader Ed Brown attended today's memorial service for Gaylord Nelson and sent this short report. (Thanks Ed.)

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Gaylord Nelson was on Richard Nixon's "enemies list." When asked why, Nelson is said to have replied, "I'm not sure -- but it's possible he heard me trying to play the trumpet in the Clear Lake (Wisconsin) high school band."

Bill Meadows of the Wilderness Society introduced a memorial service for Senator Gaylord Nelson with that story, this afternoon in the state capitol rotunda in Madison, Wis., noting that the same Clear Lake band had just played a prelude, with a very good trumpet player. This peculiar mixture of national politics and small town minutiae, political power and personal grace, captures the character of the man: former governor and senator from Wisconsin, but best known as the father of Earth Day.

Reminiscences from the speakers were impressive. Melvin Laird, secretary of defense during the Vietnam era, former VP Walter Mondale, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, and Nelson's daughter Tia, now a conservationist and political force in her own right, showed us a man who was great because he was gracious -- who led the nation not only in the environmental movement but in civil rights and family legislation as well. But what most impressed me, an ordinary member of the public, was the people with whom I was sitting . Some had met Gaylord -- no one called him "Senator" or "Governor" -- some had not. But all had been influenced to care more for the earth -- and do more about environmental problems -- because of this great and gracious man.

And it occurred to me that the secret of his life and his success was this: He could move in the halls of power, but he could do so in a way that moved ordinary people to come along with him. And that was how he got things done. May we find another leader, or two or three, like him.

Lord knows, the work isn't done.

--Ed Brown
careofcreation.org

Or, try a lab burger.

Several Gristmillians, myself included, believe that going veg is one of many ways to help prevent climate change. That belief is now supported by British scientist Alan Calverd, who wrote in the journal Physics World that "carbon emissions could be slashed by an incredible 21% overnight if we all stopped eating meat" (via edie news centre).

Can't kick the animal flesh habit? Then maybe you want to look into lab burgers -- that is animal tissue engineered in a laboratory:

Writing in the journal Tissue Engineering, Matheny said scientists could grow cells from the muscle tissue of cattle, pigs, poultry or fish in large flat sheets on thin membranes. These sheets of cells would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked to increase thickness and resemble meat.

Using another method, scientists could grow muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature. The resulting tissue could be used to make processed meat such as chicken nuggets or hamburgers.

Sounds appetizing doesn't it? I'll stick with good ol' plant-based foods thank you.

Beyond the Pail

Dealing with big-city garbage is big business for small towns As landfills top off and shut down near big U.S. cities, taking in the trash is becoming a profitable enterprise for smaller towns hundreds of miles away from metropolises. Despite local concerns that landfills may cause long-term environmental problems, trash-industry execs insist communities are taking […]

Wind for the long haul

A picture's worth a thousand words, and this graphic from the IEA hammers home the point that if you're looking for a long-term energy source, wind is it.

The image is included in an article in The Economist titled "The Shape of Things to Come?" It's a thorough account of the different angles to the current discussion over nuclear.

Also in nuclear news: The Australian reports on some objections to nuclear based on the life-cycle analysis argument, and Alternative Energy Blog has some good discussion on the paper.

It isn’t about abortion.

This point is not mine -- it's been made several places before -- but it can't be stressed enough: In the upcoming battle over the Supreme Court, abortion should not be the focus. Social issues should not be the focus.

Evangelical Christians are, by and large, useful idiots for the Republican Party. The leadership of the party stokes their ressentiment, keeps them in a perpetual state of outrage, feeds them a steady diet of bogeymen and faux controversies, but never does anything of substance for them. It's symbolism and rhetoric, top to bottom. The number of abortions isn't going down, the amount of sex and violence in the media isn't going down, divorce rates aren't going down -- we're no closer to being a "Christian nation" (by their warped definition) than we ever were. Evangelicals flock to the polls for Republicans, but they don't get shit in return.

It is to the right's great benefit that the public battle should focus on social issues like abortion. It's their terrain, it works well for them, it pumps up their base.

Greens shouldn't fall for it.

The leadership of the modern right is devoted to their large corporate donors. Not the "free market," but funneling favors, tax breaks, and subsidies to big business, creating a more "relaxed" regulatory climate. That's not always what they talk about, but it's what they do.

It's possible, though I doubt it, that Bush would nominate someone to the Supreme Court that isn't a hardcore conservative on social issues -- not committed to overturning Roe v. Wade, not of the opinion that the separation of church and state is mythical, etc.

But it is unthinkable that he would nominate anyone other than a hardcore conservative on fiscal and regulatory issues. It is environmental laws, workplace safety laws, labor organizing laws -- any law restraining corporate behavior -- that will come under intense scrutiny.

Those are the stakes. Matt Yglesias is probably right that the short-term fight over nominees is already lost, but there's still the matter of how to frame the fight, position this as a political issue, and lay the groundwork for future judicial battles.

For a good roundup of materials on this issue (via Mooney), see this post from Jordan Barab.

The healthcare costs of chemical pollution far outweigh any economic benefits.

Health care has become such an expensive endeavor -- consuming roughly an eighth of all the money our economy generates -- that even small improvements in health can save a lot of money. A recent study, mentioned here in the Seattle P-I, looks just at the health costs -- care for asthma, cancer, lead pollution, and the like -- resulting from exposure to manufactured chemicals. And according to Dr. Kate Davies, the study's author, the costs are pretty sizeable:

Davies said the environmental health costs associated with children's conditions is roughly .7 percent of the state gross national product, while environmental health costs for adults equates to 1 percent of the local annual GNP.

Which means that the health costs of a polluted environment rack up to about, oh, $4 billion a year or so in Washington State alone, at least by this estimate.

I'm not sure how much sway cost-benefit analyses should hold over environmental policy. Not only does the classic cost-benefit framework tend to sidestep fairness (why should I pay if someone else benefits?), but perhaps more importantly, cost-benefit analyses can overvalue short-term and concrete costs and benefits, while undervaluing the long-term and nebulous ones. Still, cost-benefit analysis can be an important tool if used wisely. And there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that if lead, for example, had been required to pass through a rigorous cost-benefit analysis before it was added to paint and gasoline, there's no way we'd still be paying the costs today.

Playpump

I'm finally reading Cradle to Cradle in earnest, cover to cover, rather than in pieces. I hope to have more to say about it soon.

One thing it's made me realize is how ubiquitous and close-at-hand solutions like this are: Check out the playpump, a water pump that runs on the power of a children's roundabout (or as I believe they're called in these parts, "merry-go-round"). Simple, easy to make and repair, contains no proprietary technology, and works with local energy flows. Lovely.

(Via BB)

(I can't believe I finally got to post about something like this before Worldchanging!)

Green Chiles

As quality of life improves, Chileans get eco-active Last Saturday, thousands of Chileans marched in 14 cities to celebrate two environmental victories. Green activists helped to shut down the Valdivia wood-pulp facility (owned by the country’s biggest industrial firm, Copec) after pollution from the plant killed hundreds of black-necked swans in a nearby wetland; the […]