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It usually is

... or does "Climate Change Technology Program Strategic Plan" sound like something a 14-year-old would nail to the wall of his treehouse? The only thing I'd add would be "Climate Change Technology Program Strategic Plan Laser Patrol." Cool.

As India modernizes, farmers and public health pay the price.

India's current burst of free-market reform and official attempts at "modernization" are by no means the area's first.

As Mike Davis shows in his luminous Late Victorian Holocausts (2001), the subcontinent's 19th century British rulers imposed an economic agenda literally ripped wholesale from the pages of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), that bible of free-market dogmatists.

Davis lays out in devastating detail (first chapter available for free here) how in the 1870s, high-living colonial administrators dismantled the old Indian system for handling droughts, replacing it with one in which the price of grain floated freely based on global supply and demand. Thus, when a drought struck a grain-producing region in India, the grain price surged. The only buyers who could then afford it happened to reside in merry olde England.

The subcontinent's railroad system, paid for by taxes imposed on the Indians, very efficiently carried grain being produced in the non-drought areas to ports for shipment to the mother country. Its cutting-edge telegraph infrastructure, also financed by colonial taxes, transmitted price hikes rapidly. Famine thus rippled throughout India, including in non-drought-stricken areas.

Tens of millions perished in a series of famines in late 19th century India; before, when drought struck a certain area, food would move in from luckier areas and famines were rare. Davis claims the English took advantage of these not-so-natural disasters to consolidate its grip on the subcontinent. It was all very efficient, really.

Today in India, modernization is bringing new food-related woes: growing despair among farmers and surging diabetes rates.

Wonder if that’s in Bush’s plan too

Compare and contrast. Read Bush's plan. Then read this.

California filed a global warming lawsuit on Wednesday against Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and three other automakers, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have cost the state millions of dollars.

Which do you think will be more effective?

Look on the bright side

The liberal media is always trying to claim that global warming (if it exists -- scientists are confused on that point) is bad. But just check out these pics of Greenland's burgeoning agricultural industry. Potatoes! Broccoli!

Also, think what it all means to the flip-flop industry!

It’s just funny

Call me a junior high boy, but the fact that the Zurich-based Shahneshin Foundation is giving Shrinkage Awards makes me giggle. Who are they going to give them out to? SUV drivers? Polar bears?

It’s out

... is out.

More later.

Update [2006-9-20 14:58:15 by David Roberts]: You can see the full plan here.

Damn those activist judges!

Here's some big, breaking news. Reports AP:

A federal judge on Wednesday reinstated a ban on road construction in nearly a third of national forests, overturning a Bush administration rule that allowed states to decide how to manage individual forests.

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte sided with states and environmental groups that sued the U.S. Forest Service after it reversed President Clinton's 2001 "Roadless Rule" that prohibited logging, mining and other development on 58.5 million acres in 38 states and Puerto Rico.

In May last year, the Bush administration replaced the Clinton rule with a process that required governors to petition the federal government to protect national forests in their states.

Laporte said the process violated federal law because it didn't require necessary environmental studies.

...

"This is fantastic news for millions of Americans who have consistently told the forest service that they wanted these last wild areas of public land protected," said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for Earthjustice, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit in October 2005.

Stay tuned for more ...

Try Me a River

Mississippi River may be redirected to build Louisiana wetlands How to protect and restore the Louisiana coast? A group of researchers has a crazy idea that just might work: shift the course of the Mississippi River. Every half hour or so, the Mississippi steals a football-field-sized chunk of soil from Louisiana’s coastal wetlands; it dumps […]

I hate typing that exclamation point

Al Gore's Current TV has partnered with Yahoo! to create Yahoo! Current Network. This will definitely increase Current's exposure to the treasured Young Affluent Dynamic Online (YODA) crowd.

Like blogging, but with my voice

One of the things I constantly* hear from Gristmill readers is, "David, we adore your writing, but what about your voice? We long to hear it!"

Well I give my fans what they want, so this morning, at the nightmarish hour of 7:00AM, I dragged my ass out of bed and spoke on the phone with Earthbeat Radio, a syndicated public-radio show out of D.C. The subject was "political climate change": Bush's alleged new climate policy, Gore's climate-policy speech, and related issues.

If you're eager to hear my congested, foggy, morning croak, you can download the show as an mp3 here (it's the second link down). You'll just have to trust me that my voice is much more mellifluous after several cups of coffee.

(*never)