Dear readers, as of tomorrow, I’m on vacation, visiting my ancestral homeland (the American South), not to return until July 9. My plan is to test physiological limits: just how much sleeping can one person do in nine days?
There were about a gazillion things I wanted to write about before leaving, but obviously coal ate up all my time (damn you coal!) and I won’t be able to get to them. So here are some quick hits:
Robert Bryce has a great article in Slate pointing out what all of us already know: corn ethanol’s a stupid scam, and just because Congress says we "have to" use 36 billion gallons of it by 2022 doesn’t mean we, you know, "can." There isn’t enough corn, and there’s no way cellulosic can ramp up fast enough. Electrify, baby!
Glenn Hurowitz has a fantastic article bashing liquid coal. It’s even better than mine, for which I hate and envy him.
A new(ish) report from the Sierra Club: “The Dirty Truth About Coal: Why Yesterday’s Technology Should Not Be Part of Tomorrow’s Energy Future.” Word.
The Oxford Research Group is coming out with a report next week called "Too Hot to Handle? The Future of Civil Nuclear Power." It makes a simple and devastating point:
The world must start building nuclear power plants at the unprecedented rate of four a month from now on if nuclear energy is to play a serious part in fighting global warming, a leading think-tank said on Wednesday.
Not only is this impossible for logistical reasons, but it has major implications for world security because of nuclear weapons proliferation …
…
“A world-wide nuclear renaissance is beyond the capacity of the nuclear industry to deliver and would stretch to breaking point the capacity of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to monitor and safeguard civil nuclear power,” it said.
Reps. Bartlett (R-Md) and Udall (D-N.M.) make a crucial point that we all should make more often: going green is profitable and patriotic, not some drag on the economy.
Good poll data from Ruy Teixeira on the public’s appetite for action on climate change.
Looks like the government might actually finally start going after geothermal power.
Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson says to give up on all that alternative fuels crap: “All I can tell you is [that] in all likelihood I’ll get driven to my funeral in a hearse that’s using gasoline or diesel.”
The head of British Columbia’s Green Party has a blog that is quite, um, candid.
Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund has a clever series of commercials bashing individual members of Congress who refuse to get a clue on climate change.
Another great video at DeSmogBlog of vintage tobacco spin.
Hippies: right about everything. But still smelly. And shrill. And not Serious.
