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The latest issue is full of goodies

This month's issue of Science gave me lots of food for thought.

There was an article about Edmund Phelps, who just won the 2006 Nobel Prize in economics. It tells us that the U.S. swept the science Nobel Prizes this year -- analogous to winning all the gold medals at the Olympics. Putting it this way cheapens the whole process and is a reminder of the competitive nature of people, scientists included.

On the other hand, this is an example of how a country with enough wealth and education to pay millions of people to sit around on their butts and problem solve -- engineers, scientists, and economists -- can contribute solutions to the world's many problems.

Expect to see more solutions coming from India and China in the not too distant future. The three billion desperately poor of the world cannot contribute, having their hands full just staying alive. Those billions of potential problem solvers are lost to us, thanks to the tremendous rate of population growth that outstripped the economic growth, infrastructure, and education needed to keep them from being impoverished.

An insult generator for tree-huggers

Inspired by Mark Peters' piece on tree-hugging and name-calling, a dear reader and his friend converted an Elizabethan insult generator into a Conservative insult generator and then into a combined Elizabethan-Conservative insult generator. So there, you quailing, hazardous-waste-spooning pignuts!

They’re on board

I read the statement below after a round of knocking on church doors to pitch a local screening of The Great Warming to pastors and priests -- yes, thank you, I did feel a bit silly. Anyway, Moab's 8,000 residents are served by 19 official houses of worship (you can find the less-organized believers at the co-op). By and large, churchgoers here vote, and they're pretty pro-active, especially when it comes to the health and welfare of the canyons.

Rick Sherman, a Catholic priest who's written on stewardship for a few newspapers, was quick to point out that his church has been on the environmental ball for years, and handed me a few pamphlets on the subject. Not having read many religious tracts lately, I was impressed -- and not scared a bit! This is from Global Climate Change: a plea for dialogue, prudence and the common good, a statement from the U.S. Catholic Bishops. Yes, it's a serious read, but it's not Latin and there's no math.

Business as usual is expensive too

Will global warming eventually cost the world's economy $12 trillion? I've got no clue. I mean, even the specialists who've studied the economic impacts of climate change have no real idea. The latest figure is just their best guess.

But this much is clear: no matter whether this estimate is on the mark, the idea that we should tally the cost of "business as usual" -- i.e., letting climate change run amok -- is exactly the right framework for thinking about the issue.

A guest essay by Melanie Griffin

We present a guest essay from Melanie Griffin, director of Sierra Club's Partnerships Program.

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I've been a "professional environmentalist" for 25 years now. While the right wing paints a picture of environmentalists as negative obstructionists and prophets of doom and gloom, I don't fit that description and neither do most of my environmentally inclined friends. It's true we are forced to spend a lot of our time "stopping" things -- hazardous waste dumping, irresponsible development, oil drilling in America's Wildlife Refuges and the like. And if you're paying any attention at all to the current trends and predictions about global warming, or to the Bush Administration's unraveling of decades of basic environmental safeguards, you probably wonder how a career conservationist ever gets out of bed in the morning.

But let's face it, to dedicate your life to protecting the planet from basic human behaviors like greed and power and selfishness, you've got to be an optimist at heart. You have to believe that you can make a difference with your life -- that there is hope.

The Great Warming pops up in Moyers’ special

It may only have been a couple of establishing shots, but when America's great documentarian gives you the nod, baby, that's legit. This brief brush with fame came during the PBS Moyers on America special Is God Green?, when "Courtesy of The Great Warming" flashed across the screen -- twice! I dropped my fork and called the folks.

Tips to save energy

I wish I'd written this: an energy economist's seven-point prescription for using energy more efficiently.

It begins

Read the last item of today's Daily Grist. Then read this post (by me) a while back.

I'm just saying.

More navel-gazing!

Now that the wingnuts have moved on to their latest outrage of the day, let's take a closer look at the notorious Nuremberg analogy. On reflection, I've come to think that it's inappropriate -- and not because it gave Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh (and Brit Hume!) one of their patented umbrage woodies. Three reasons:

First off, never violate Godwin's Law. It's a law for a reason.

Two, the Nuremberg trials resulted in executions. I'm opposed to state-sanctioned execution in all cases, but would certainly never advocate it merely for the crime of being a lying scumbag.

Third -- and more to the point -- Nuremberg was primarily about prosecution and punishment. I'm not a particularly vindictive person, and I'm not that interested in retribution. What I'm interested in is the truth: that the truth be aired; that those who have lied own up to it and be held accountable; that those who suffered as a result of the lies be allowed to tell their stories.

For these reasons, a far better analogy for what I had in mind would have been South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or perhaps what the Germans call Vergangenheitsbewältigung:

Biofuels are wiping out rainforests

Almuth Ernsting over at Biofuel Watch has been working hard to get the word out on a small problem: a billion tons of carbon going into the air annually, with the potential of about fifty billion more on the way. People are deliberately setting Southeast Asia's rainforests and peatlands on fire to convert the land into something they can sell to countries striving to meet their Kyoto obligations -- palm oil. To put this into perspective, there are about 8 billion metric tons of carbon being dumped into the atmosphere by people annually, 6.5 billion tons from fossil fuels and 1.5 billion from deforestation. This is much worse than just dumping carbon from a tailpipe because it also simultaneously destroys entire ecosystems. You get two disasters for the price of one.