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A bleg re: trucks idling their engines

Verizon trucks sometimes come and idle their engines all day long in front of my house (sometimes several trucks for several days), and I am told that because they use their engines to power their equipment, they are exempt from EPA guidelines for idling engines.

Is there any energy source I could ask them to use instead of running their engines all day? Also, I have asked them to tell me when they are going to be coming so I can plan to work elsewhere that day, but they refuse to do so. Does anyone know if there are any precedents for requiring some kind of notice about work that is obviously scheduled maintenance and not emergency repair work?

An alternate history

Terry Bisson's underappreciated alternate reality masterwork Fire on the Mountain posits an alternative Civil War, where Harriet Tubman was well enough to join John Brown in his ill-fated raid against Harper's Ferry. In Bisson's book, her tactical common sense leads to the raid's success, and rather than the Civil War beginning with a Southern Rebellion, it begins with a slave revolt.

I'm going to post a bit of speculative fiction myself, on the same premise. But rather than leading to an egalitarian utopia, as it does in Bisson's novel, I'm going to assume it leads a world rather like our own, except that the technology evolves based on biofuels and renewable energy rather than on coal, then oil. The point of this is not to compete with Bisson's literary genius, but to riff off it to explore some of the oversimplifications made about the relation between oil and war. [Attention conserving notice: this post is a bit of a shaggy dog story.]

Football’s biggest day will be carbon neutral

I don’t really like football, but I love the Super Bowl. Chips, dip, friends, commercials, man-hugging — it’s one of my favorite days of the year. And this year, it’ll be extra-super, as it’ll be carbon neutral. Thanks to the planting of hundreds of trees, the event might even be carbon negative, says the NFL’s […]

Utah middle schoolers send message to world

Almost two years ago, aerial artist John Quigley brought more than 500 community residents and several movie stars together to spell out the words “Arctic Warning” way up in the Arctic Circle. The event was documented by Everything’s Cool co-director Daniel B. Gold, and makes an appearance in the film. On Monday, Quigley arranged nearly […]

Oscar talk

The fact that that the contrived, self-consciously "quirky" Little Miss Sunshine was nominated for Best Picture while Children of Men was relegated to the editing and adapted screenplay categories is just the latest testament to the travesty of aesthetic judgment that is The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I will nonetheless, as always, […]

Geek out, friends

Really into the NYT interactive tool that lets you see how many times the president used certain words. Lets you catch up if you needed a bathroom break I guess, but this year’s speech was relatively unexciting on the drinking game front.

Coal is hardly renewable

Q: When is an alternative fuel not a renewable fuel?

A: When it is coal-to-liquids.

Lost in the call for 35 billion gallons of non-gasoline fuel was the fact that the president has expanded the definition of what fuels qualify for his mandate. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 established a renewable fuels standard. Tonight the president called for a vastly expanded alternative fuels standard -- one that would include "sources such as corn ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, biodiesel, methanol, butanol, hydrogen, and alternative fuels," a.k.a. coal-to-liquids.

Trading gasoline for liquid fuels from coal does not bode well for the future state of our union.

Decent

I thought Webb’s Dem response was good, though he didn’t really touch on the issues close to our green hearts. It was a strong populist and anti-Iraq-War speech, appropriately gruff and strong. I liked the last bit. If Bush does the right things, they’ll join him. If not, “we’ll be showing him the way.” Vaguely […]

Kind of a let down

Well, he mentioned climate change, sure enough: America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment — and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change. A couple […]

All the kids are doing it

The speech is starting. Here goes some live-blogging! Apparently Kucinich got a hug in. Hilarious. Graceful shout-out to “Madame Speaker.” “Democrat” majority. What a jerk. “Spend money wisely.” Har. Now, six years in, with a Dem majority in Congress, suddenly the dude cares about bipartisanship. Mm hm. (Wages aren’t actually rising for working people, George.) […]