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Property owners bribe their own communities

Here's a perfect example of why pay-or-waive laws don't work. In the rural Oregon community of Prineville, a property owner filed a claim under Measure 37 demanding to be allowed to build his house on a specific portion of his property that's zoned otherwise. Instead of waiving the zoning law, the county council became the first in Oregon to offer taxpayer compensation instead -- to the tune of about $47,000.

It’s going to come via coal

This news from China is not encouraging:

Beijing has settled on a national standard for methanol as an automotive fuel, a decision which will legitimise and bolster a market that has been growing rapidly without central government approval ...

By the time the plants, which convert coal to liquids, start producing in 2011 to 2013, China's oil demand will have doubled, allowing methanol to supply about 10 per cent of the market.

And they want us to stay in Iraq

Speaking of the Iraq War, you may have heard that VP Dick Cheney was "summoned" to Saudi Arabia recently by the crown prince. You may also have heard that Bush recently resumed his "stay the course" rhetoric, vowing not to withdraw troops no matter what the Baker Commission says.

Seems those two facts are connected. Seems Saudi Arabia really doesn't want us to leave Iraq, which they apparently communicated to Cheney in no uncertain terms.

Now they're openly threatening that if the U.S. withdraws they will arm Sunni militias (to back them against Iran-armed Shia militias) and sharply boost oil production, thereby cutting oil prices in half and undercutting Iran's economy.

This is particularly comforting:

It’s so sad it’s almost funny

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court considered its first global warming case ever. At issue is whether carbon dioxide falls under the Clean Air Act's definition of "pollutant" and thus whether the EPA has the responsibility to regulate emissions thereof. The ramifications of their decision could be huge -- yet this is what went on in those vaunted halls of justice yesterday:

Cut and Run

Easy efficiency steps could slash global power demand, report says Thoreau said the preservation of the world was in wildness, but it might be in light bulbs. A new report says efficiency improvements could cut global energy-consumption increases by more than half over the next 15 years. From replacing bulbs and improving insulation to rejiggering […]

Two stark takes from ground zero of our Gulf misadventure

John McGrath recently argued persuasively here that the Iraq War deserves to be taken more seriously by environmentalists.

No one bothers to deny it's an oil war anymore; the time has come to take it seriously as such. It's important to know what precisely is happening on the ground in Iraq, and to try to get a handle on the labyrinthine politics now at play.

To that end, here are two blunt recent reports.

Hockey stick study bolstered

Nice story over at Newscientist.com about a new study by David C. Lund, Jean Lynch-Stieglitz, and William B. Curry in Nature that undercuts the "where's the little ice age?" argument against Mann's Hockey Stick graph:

Students worldwide weigh in

Google recently partnered with Global SchoolNet to invite teachers and students to use Google software in a project to brainstorm strategies for combating global warming. Children of all ages from more than 80 schools around the world participated. Here are their top 5 ideas:

Why I’m disappointed with yesterday’s Supreme Court hearings

I was quite disappointed to see "uncertainty" front-and-center in the arguments yesterday by the EPA lawyer before the Supreme Court:

... now is not the time to exercise such authority, in light of the substantial scientific uncertainty surrounding global climate change and the ongoing studies designed to address those uncertainties.

I thought I'd detected a shift by those opposed to action away from this argument and toward economic and fairness arguments. I guess when your back's against the wall, you go with what you know.

The argument that there is too much uncertainty to act is a value decision, not a scientific one. Consider this example: the odds of dying in a skydiving accident are about 100,000 to one. You and I can agree on this statistic, but disagree on its implications. I can say, "that's too risky," while you might disagree and argue, "I'm jumping -- you can't live your life avoiding risk."

One dime a month is all it takes

Just this morning I had to rip up the zillionth letter I've gotten from some anonymous agency somewhere out in Arizona urging me to reconsolidate my student loan (something I did years ago.) I tossed it into the recycling bin without further ado.

Now a start-up company called Greendimes promises to put an end to this incessant barrage of junkmail. For $3 a month, or a dime a day, the staff at GD will do the legwork to get you off of mailing lists and other pesky databases that flood your postbox with unnecessary paper. And each month they will plant a tree on your behalf through collaboration with Trees for the Future.