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Clean Automotive Technology funding

It's over a week old, but it's still worth reading Michael Stebbins' piece in Seed about the cool things coming out of the EPA's Clean Automotive Technology program -- including the nifty "hydraulic hybrid" UPS truck -- and Congress' short-sighted refusal to fund it adequately:

... between 2002 and 2006, the President's annual budget requests and Congress had tag-teamed the Clean Automotive Technology program, slashing its budget in half to $10 million per year for the 35 engineers working to reinvent the engine. In his budget request for 2007 -- released just after his State of the Union address, in which he announced his Advanced Energy Initiative to decrease our oil imports from the Middle East as much as 75% by 2025 -- the President asked Congress to cut the budget for the program to a paltry $3.6 million.

Jerks.

Not to get all grassy knoll, but …

From the I-don't-want-to-get-all-grassy-knoll-on-y'all-I'm-just-sayin' department, I offer two items buried in the business page of today's New York Times:

* On page C3, we learn that Ken Lay isn't the only businessman involved in the Enron mess who came to an untimely end. Here is the NYT:

A British banker who provided evidence to the F.B.I. and the United States Department of Justice about Enron-related transactions has been found dead in an East London park, days ahead of the politically charged extradition of his former colleagues to Houston to stand trial.

Scotland Yard, the Times goes on, "said the death was being treated as 'unexplained' and that officers from its homicide and serious crime units were investigating."

Brilliant

A friend who inexplicably still reads Wired religiously pointed me to this interview with Larry Brilliant, who was recently put in charge of Google.org, the philanthropic foundation set up by the Google guys.

Brilliant's quite a guy -- check out the whole thing -- but naturally this jumped out at me:

What's your mandate?
We'll have three big areas: climate crisis, global public heath, and global poverty, not necessarily in that order. I'm going to approach this the way a venture capitalist would -- map out the industry to see what the gaps are. You fund an initiative, learn what works, and ask, "Will it scale?"

To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint.

Sweet:

‘Eco-terrorism’: Arson v. satire

There's a lot of good stuff in Pat Morrison's op-ed on the overuse of the word "terrorism." Like this:

From the White House to the soccer pitch, "terrorist" has "cooties" and "your mother wears combat boots" flat beat as the top playground potty-mouth slur for the 21st century.

Who's surprised? The Bush administration has been scattering the word like ticker tape on a Manhattan parade. Old McDonald left the farm for the NSA, and now it's here a terrorist, there a terrorist, everywhere a terrorist.

I couldn't agree more about the politically driven cheapening of the word. But he also makes a good point about environmental activism:

Osama bin Laden has said that he fears mockery more than death. If eco-protesters want to do some real damage, they should give up arson and take up ridicule. Don't torch those SUVs; put a cardboard cutout of Bin Laden in the passenger seat of an H2, and one of Dubya in the driver's seat beside him, then alert the media.

Hm ... sounds like something I've heard before ...

(Some other good stuff on eco-terrorism from Renee Downing and Randy Serraglio.)

Newt and energy

Newt Gingrich is likely going to run for president in 2008. I hope and pray he wins the Republican nomination, as his defeat in the general would be all but a certainty, but it strikes me as unlikely.

Anyway, he describes his proposed energy policy on this page, and it includes a rather baffling misunderstanding that seems common in conservative circles:

The Bush administration's investment in developing hydrogen energy resources may be the biggest breakthrough of the next half-century. Hydrogen has the potential to provide energy that has no environmental downside. In one stroke a hydrogen economy would eliminate both air pollution and global warming concerns. Since hydrogen is abundant in the air and water around us, it eliminates both the national security and foreign exchange problems associated with petroleum.

Uh.

Offshore oil

The usual suspects in Congress are pushing hard for legislation that would end the ban on U.S. offshore drilling. It's the latest cause célèbre of the Fossil Fuels Forever crowd.

Over on Oil Drum, Dave (no relation) takes a long, close look at the claims made by proponents about available oil reserves. It's somewhat technical, as usual for OD, so if you want to skip to the end, here's the nut:

In conclusion, here in the United States we continue to fiddle as Rome burns.

Sigh.

Inhofe press flacks ‘worst people in the world’

The inimitable Keith Olberman named Marc Morano and Matt Dempsey, the press flacks for the Senate Environment Committee, as his "worst persons in the world" yesterday.

OK, they came in second -- got the silver medal -- but still.

Morano himself sent out a press release about it; perhaps in true hack fashion he thinks any publicity is good publicity.

(If you don't recall the background, the committee, chaired by Sen. Inhofe, has started sending out press releases filled with lies and ad hominem attacks about global warming, directed at newspaper articles and now TV specials. With your tax dollars.)

We Hope the Russians Love Their Tube Worms Too

Russians plan to drill into untouched Antarctic lake The world’s seventh-largest freshwater lake is locked under a giant Antarctic ice sheet and has never been exposed to human contact — but Russian scientists have drilled within 425 feet of it, and, despite pleas from scientists and environmentalists, intend to drill in all the way over […]

Road trip, dudes!

The Kick the Oil Habit road trip is underway -- it was introduced today by Sen. Barack Obama.