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Conservatives on global warming v. conservatives on terrorism

A comment on the aforecited TP post reminds me of something I've been meaning to say: The arguments conservatives use for inaction on global warming seem sharply at odds with their arguments about terrorism.

Consider Dick Cheney's celebrated One Percent Doctrine, which says that even a 1% chance of catastrophic terrorist attack should prompt us to respond as though it were a certainty.

Well, the chances of catastrophic damage from global warming are a hell of a lot higher than 1%. So ...

Capitalism

In a recent post, I mentioned the common misconception that the only way to fight global warming is to cripple capitalism.

You won't find that misconception more clearly expressed than in this op-ed by Donald J. Boudreaux:

Eat it up

Maybe y'all knew this already, but I read this today and felt sick to my stomach:

Rijsberman said the price of water would have to increase to meet an expected 50 percent increase in the amount of food the world will need in the next 20 years.

Emphasis, and trepidation about the not-so-distant future, mine.

Is a brand-new hybrid SUV a “grand” prize?

As I've mentioned before, I'm definitely not a closet reality TV fan. But if I were, I might note that tonight is the finale of So You Think You Can Dance, a Fox gem by the creators of American Idol, except, you know, with dancing. (I mean, I assume.) Why am I mentioning this here? Well, the winner of tonight's show will go away with a grand-prize package that includes, in addition to a year's contract as a dancer with Celine Dion's Vegas show, a brand-new hybrid SUV.

That's right. A hybrid. Now, you wouldn't know this from looking at the SYTYCD website. And in fact, they hardly even make note of it on the show. (Or so I've heard.) It's kind of mumbled every so often. Here's the thing: I'm psyched that a hybrid vehicle (albeit an SUV) is considered cool enough and flashy enough to be a grand prize for a show with a very-middle-America demographic. But why no hype?

Oxygen-deprived area kills crabs and fish

In 2002, scientists discovered a large "dead zone" -- a marine area that has virtually no oxygen and thus can't support life -- off the coast of Oregon. Dead zones are occurring with increasing frequency all over the world. Scientists believe that changes in weather -- sound familiar? -- are contributing to the ever increasing size of the Oregon dead zone. This summer's dead zone is one of the worst. Thousands of dead Dungeness crab, sea stars, and other marine life carpet the ocean floor. Check out this video that made Al Pazar, chairman of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission and a crab fisherman himself, "weak in the knees."

The Grass is Always Meaner on the Other Side

Genetically modified grass found in the wild In what could be the first confirmed instance of a genetically modified plant growing outside a farm in the U.S., EPA ecologists have found an unapproved type of GM grass in the wild in central Oregon. The EPA said the creeping bentgrass (could it sound more evil?), being […]

From Bad to Thirst

Water crisis doesn’t care if countries are rich or poor Water crisis: not just for poor countries anymore. Industrialized nations must make drastic policy changes if they wish to maintain water supplies, warns the World Wildlife Fund today. In cities from Seville to Sydney to Sacramento, water has become a hot political issue as supply […]

Talking point: The environmentalist yes

Advocates of nuclear energy, coal gasification, and other hold-your-nose-and-take-your-medicine energy alternatives frequently bully opponents by saying that there's no other way to fight global warming.

If you really cared about global warming, the rhetoric goes, you'd put your effete, nitpicky objections aside for the greater good. After all, global warming is an urgent problem, and these are the only solutions we have!

This is more or less the pro-nuke line taken by James Lovelock and Stewart Brand, and the pro-gasification line taken by Montana governor Brian Schweitzer. There are plenty of other examples.

Problem is, it's not true.

Bicycling highs

You know what kills me? We have perfected a transportation technology that could make a huge dent in CO2 emissions and in liquid-fuel consumption -- and it's barely utilized. I know it gets tiresome hearing bike enthusiasts harp about their passion, but if you could eliminate most of the reasons people don't ride bikes, you would have an awful lot of bike riders.

Walking tall tale

Looking for something else, I came across a web page that makes this rather startling claim:

[W]alking actually uses more fossil energy than driving, if the calories burned from walking come from a typical American diet.

The crux of the claim is that the North American food system uses so much fossil fuel -- for manufacturing fertilizer and pesticides, running farm machinery, transporting food from farm fields to stores and homes, powering refrigerators and stoves, etc. -- that producing the food calories to power a one mile walk uses up more fossil fuel energy than a typical car burns in a one-mile drive.

That seemed counterintuitive, to be sure -- but not completely ridiculous. So I spent some time looking at the issues.

As far as I can tell, the web page is probably wrong: walking is more energy-efficient than driving.

However, they're closer than I might have thought.