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How to green your pet

Without pets, the world would be such a pale, less playful version of itself. No Wallace and Gromit videos. No Fluffy purring in our laps or Fido fetching his Frisbee. No cheerful creatures welcoming us home and adoring us unconditionally. (OK, we’d still have mom.) So we love them, there’s no getting around it. But […]

Word

James Howard Kunstler, who has a new post-peak-oil novel out this week (World Made by Hand, which I hope to review soon) hits the nail on the head in his weekly commentary:

Global warming could thaw relations between enviros and those who live closest to ‘the environment’

I wasn't particularly planning to continue on the culture war beat, but then, I wasn't expecting Orion Magazine to publish exactly the type of article of which I'd like to see more. In "One Nation Under Elvis," author and environmentalist Rebecca Solnit uses music -- specifically country music -- as a jumping off point to examine the cultural and class markers that divide a movement from itself.

It's become a bit trite to say that climate change isn't (or shouldn't be) a left-right issue. But political coalitions in the U.S. really did once look quite different than they do now. In the '30s, the progressive movement "saw farmers, loggers, fisheries workers, and miners as its central constituency along with longshoremen and factory workers." According to Solnit, this constituency frayed in the postwar period, and blasted apart in the 1960s:

State officials given OK to kill sea lions to protect salmon

Oregon and Washington state officials will have the authority to trap and, if necessary, kill up to 85 of the sea lions that gobble up threatened salmon at the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced Tuesday. Sea lions, which enjoy a robust population but are nonetheless protected under the 1972 Marine […]

City selected for largest U.S. smart grid project

When Xcel Energy announced a few days ago that it had selected Boulder, Colo. as "the nation's first fully integrated Smart Grid City," it represented a vitally important step toward creating a low-carbon energy network.

Xcel previously announced its intention to stage the largest and most comprehensive deployment of smart grid technologies in the U.S. ever, and now it says it has targeted Boulder for a several-year effort that will cost up to $100 million. The aim at a comprehensive system is precisely what makes this a breakthrough.

Smart grid technologies exhibit the classic network effect. Deployed individually, some can still have valuable benefits, as the personal computer did before the internet. To maximize benefits, however, they must be put together. Because this requires an overall systems transformation, and because such changes generally pose all sorts of chicken-and-egg challenges, the smart grid has been slow to catch on in the U.S. (France and Italy, who have more centrally managed electrical systems, have managed to advance farther.)

Electric cars could impact water supplies, says analysis

Converting most U.S. vehicles to run on electricity could have an impact on water supplies, according to an analysis to be published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Generating the needed electricity would require more water than producing gasoline, the report found — that is, if the nation’s electricity grid continues to be powered […]

Defying conventional wisdom, NC residents express desire for public transport

Photo: Roadsidepictures You know that old saw about how greens should shut up about public transportation because Americans hate trains and insist on getting around in their own private chunks of resource-sucking steel and plastic? Well, that may be going the way of $2/gallon gas. Get this, from a recent poll of North Carolina residents: […]

Journalist Michael Grunwald on the hubris of the Army Corps

Dam, that’s a pretty lock: the sun sets behind the Corps navigation structure at Alton, Ill. Photo: Mark Hirsch Imagine the Pentagon had been caught red-handed concocting its justification before launching the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Imagine that after the scandal died down, the Pentagon admitted Saddam didn’t really have WMDs — but proposed […]

Tony Blair to lead international climate team, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: It’s a Glac-Sure Thing Gasp! Bush Whacked Diesel Do The B-Team Pros and Econs Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Espresso Express I Sink, Therefore I Am Fighting Dirty

Race and opportunity

Obama: Jones: