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Misleading campaigns and unconstitutional initiatives

In my previous posts on the 2006 takings ballot measures (here, here, and here), I promised I'd get out the tinfoil hat and talk conspiracy theory. So here goes ...

Energy independence is hot campaign topic

Tomorrow is election day. Get yourself to a polling booth.

In Washington, the buzz right now is that Democrats will win a slight majority in the House and fall slightly short of a majority in the Senate.

I don't have a crystal ball, but whatever the outcome, it now looks possible that a number of freshmen in next year's Congress will have been elected, in part, on a platform of energy independence/alternative energy. Of course, elevating a political issue and solving a problem are different matters. There are many ways to imagine best intentions turning into pork-laden boondoggles (read: more ethanol subsidies). But first you have to get people to pay attention -- and to believe a different future is possible. That seems to be happening this election cycle.

Candidates in competitive races, from Jon Tester to Harold Ford, Claire McCaskill to Maria Cantwell, are running ads on the theme of alternative energy. Windmills appear in at least 17 spots.

Children, anxiety, and global warming

I found this post over on the Climate Ark blog.

Hello,

My 8-year-old daughter has just come running to me in a flood of tears. Why? Because she thinks the world is going to end sometime soon and it's the fault of me and, to a lesser extent, my generation. That's why. Why does she think that? Because she takes it for gospel that over bearing boffins like yourself know more than ordinary folk like me. Does it make you feel good? Making an eight-year-old girl with a mouth brace bawl her little eyes out?

I really empathized with this father. There's more:

Thou Shalt Not Passage

Canada, U.S. debate shipping rights in legendary Northwest Passage Remember when we said Canadians were needy? Well, get a load of this: they want to maintain control over shipping rights in the legendary Northwest Passage, just because they own it. The nerve! With climate change melting Arctic ice, the Atlantic-to-Pacific byway — long traveled seasonally […]

Share your green awakening

A good friend of mine has just turned green. But it wasn't The Great Warming or An Inconvenient Truth that did the trick, but Robert F. Kennedy's Crimes Against Nature.

I bring it up because this friend is well-read, intelligent, and politically liberal; he has certainly been exposed to all the same evidence that won other people over long ago. And yet until now, the only time the word "environmentalist" issued from his mouth was when he was teasing me about being one. RFK's book -- with its contrast of political and corporate greed on one hand and democracy-driven environmental stewardship on the other -- spoke my friend's language ... and now he won't shut up about tragedies against the commons and government-subsidized pollution.

Does biology work against religious sentiment?

Here's an excellent piece by John Derbyshire at National Review explaining his (lack of) religious views.

What does it have to do with environmentalism? Well, check out this part:

By quite a bit

Two new polls show Republicans suddenly and dramatically gaining on Democrats. What was looking like a Dem "wave" is now looking like yet another squeaker. If we're lucky, maybe we'll get some recounts and court battles!

Trim those carbon love handles

In a clever take-off on Biggest Loser (one of the saddest excuses for television programming I've seen yet), Slate.com recently announced its Green Challenge, an 8-week carbon diet that provides a steady menu of simple "action items," urging participants to curb their energy-gobbling ways.

As of 8am, November 3rd, the challenge has attracted 22,572 participants for a collective CO2 weight loss of 28,865,784 pounds.

Here's hoping that carbon dieters view this as a lifestyle change and don't -- like many regular dieters -- quickly regain all the lost weight and then some.

The ethical and environmental dilemma of coffee

On a baking hot summer night a few years ago, some friends and I took a walk through our Somerville neighborhood. The day had been so warm that heat was still rising from the pavement even at 10 pm. A man from Central America was out tending his garden under the pale light of the street lamp. As my friends asked him about his plants, I thought I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a coffee bush. I had never seen one in real life, only in photographs, but I knew right away what it was.

"Is that coffee?" I asked incredulously. "Yes," he said with a grin, and then showed me that he grows it in a huge tub. He takes the coffee bush indoors during the winter and devotes an entire room of his house to caring for his tropical plants. He controls the heat and humidity and runs a sun lamp all winter long. He said he picks and roasts all his own coffee, just as he had before coming to the U.S.

For most of us, however, coffee is a tropical product imported from far away -- and therein lies a dilemma. Since October was Fair Trade month, I decided to check out some of the local Fair Trade businesses to see what their take is on importing tropical products.

A month’s worth of beautiful and/or fascinating astronomy photos from NASA

For your Sunday time-wasting pleasure, last month's selections from Astronomy Picture of the Day: