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Sigh

I wish, instead of being a poor writer, I was a rich writer. Then I'd build a house like this. (Check out the slideshow.)

Values

From what I've seen, everything Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus have produced consists of one part genuine insight, one part confusion, and one part banality, presented with a breathless air of revolution, an undertone of smug satisfaction, and a generous dollop of self-promotion.

Garance Franke-Ruta's long, dense piece in this month's American Prospect more or less confirms that assessment. It's not about the Death stuff, but a broader project to map the current values of the American public and help progressives figure out how to appeal to them. The reapers are opening an American branch of the Canadian consumer-research firm Environics -- bringing the extremely sophisticated research tools used by the private sector to the public sector (where conventional polling is woefully inexact).

The basic picture is this: For the past couple of decades, "values" have come to eclipse, and in many ways serve as a proxy for, issues of economic self-interest. This has left the Democrats out in the cold. So what are those values?

Here's the nut:

It’s a rough winter down Russia way

Russia's energy woes -- and, by extension, Europe's -- continue as the country scrambles to deal with the coldest recorded weather since 1927.

As one story reports, cuts in exports "hit supplies across Eastern Europe and sparked criticism from both the European Union and the United States that Moscow was 'politicising' energy."

Um, takes one to know one?

Dust Breathe

EPA seeks to rescind clean-air protections for rural areas A new Bush administration proposal would strip significant clean-air protections from rural areas. The U.S. EPA would exempt these areas from meeting federal standards for coarse particulate matter — essentially, windblown clouds of dust — and end federal monitoring of particulate levels in those locales. The […]

We’re all going to die

Wow, well ... shit.

This piece in Fortune, adapted by Eugene Linden from his book Winds of Change, is a front-runner for the most depressing thing I've ever read. I don't see how anyone could read it and feel anything other than depressed paralysis.

I guess you should read it, if depressed paralysis is your thing. Me, I'm headed to Costco to buy some bottled water, canned food, and a rifle.

(hat tip: Bart A)

Friedman’s mustache of understanding yields more truth

It's too bad y'all can't read Times $elect, cause Tom Friedman (the Mustache of Understanding) is really waving the green flag for us. Last week was his broad call to arms -- "green is the new red, white and blue" -- and this week comes a narrow focus on a particular case: a Texas Instruments chip factory in Texas.

The challenge to the designers of the factory was explicit:

T.I. always wanted to keep its newest wafer factory near Dallas so it would be near its design center and ideas could flow back and forth. But China, Taiwan and Singapore were all tempting alternatives, offering low wages, subsidies and tax breaks. So the T.I. leadership laid down a challenge: T.I. could locate its new wafer factory in Richardson, if the T.I. design team and community leaders could find a way to build it for $180 million less than its last Dallas factory, erected in the late 1990's. That would make its cost-per-wafer competitive with any overseas plant's.

Say it with me: domestic jobs.

The T.I. design team partnered with Amory Lovins (also not too shabby in the mustache department) and pulled it off:

[Stupid aloha joke here]: Hawaii and the oil endgame

I'm a few days late on this, but it seems significant.

Hawaii's Republican (oops, did I italicize that?) Governor Linda Lingle has proposed a new bill called "Energy for Tomorrow." You can read the original press release (here as PDF; here converted to HTML) or a shorter fact sheet (PDF; HTML). The five major components:

• "Savings through Efficiency"
• "Independence through Renewable Energy"
• "Fuels through Farming"
• "Security through Technology"
• "Empowering Hawaii's Consumers"

It draws heavily on the Rocky Mountain Institute's Winning the Oil Endgame, and aims to make the state most dependent on fossil-fuel imports energy independent. Bold.

From a story in Renewable Energy Access:

Syriana goes climate neutral

Hot off the (press release) presses:

In a groundbreaking move, Warner Bros. Pictures and Participant Productions have made Syriana, a multi-layered political thriller about the global oil industry, the first major motion picture to be "climate neutral" by offsetting 100% of carbon dioxide emissions generated by the production during filming -- an estimated 2,040 tons -- with investments in renewable energy. Investments will be made in wind and methane power and, specifically, in projects that may not otherwise happen without this support.

NativeEnergy worked with Syriana's producers to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from all of Syriana's production activities, including filming, air travel, rental car and truck emissions, hotel energy use, diesel generators used on location, office and warehouse energy use, and emissions from shipping. NativeEnergy then offset those emissions by purchasing renewable energy credits, or "green tags," from renewable energy projects.

(I added the links. Haven't found the press release online yet -- will link when I do.)

Pretty cool.

Update [2006-1-18 15:15:9 by David Roberts]: Hm ... DavoJ says in comments that The Day After Tomorrow was in fact the first climate-neutral blockbuster, and IMDb at least seems to back him up. Anybody got more info on this?

Al Gore: The Movie

There's an interesting piece in the L.A. Times about the documentary on Al Gore and global warming that's going to debut at Sundance. (We will, if all goes well, have a review of the film before too long.)

They've got some pretty impressive firepower behind it:

EarthEngine.net

A word of counsel to the new and potential-laden earthengine.net: Just because you can do something in Flash doesn't mean you should.