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Brazil seizes huge load of illegal Amazon timber after riots

Brazilian troops and police seized about 500 truckloads of illegal hardwood timber from the Amazon rainforest over the weekend, following riots and protests by sawmill workers and others that had forced out environmental inspectors earlier in the week. After the inspectors were driven out, they came back days later with over 450 troops to confiscate […]

NBC on ABEC

Via ThinkProgress comes this segment on NBC Nightly News: [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.1011965&w=425&h=370&fv=launch%3D23279992%26amp%3Bwidth%3D400%26amp%3Bheight%3D320] Obviously I am totally unable to judge these things with any sort of objectivity. All I see is a huge, wealthy, politically connected industry using propaganda techniques to push a dirty facility on a community that is so poor and desperate that it’s willing […]

Notable quotable

“His being on the Green Party [ballot] prevented Al Gore from being the greenest president we could have had, and I think that’s really unfortunate. I think we paid a big price for it. I’m pretty sad about that. — Hillary Clinton, on Ralph Nader’s entry into the 2008 presidential race

Various items of sporting significance

Gather into the huddle for your sporting update! The news on Beijing 2008: Six green activists will carry the Olympic torch as it journeys through Thailand on its way to light up the night at the Beijing Olympics this summer. Five provinces neighboring Beijing have pledged to work on air pollution to help the city […]

Science says we are turning the West into a desert

A major new study in Science by a dozen water experts, concluded humans are the primary cause of changes in Western river flow, winter air temperature and snow pack in the past 50 years -- and things will only get worse if we don't act soon. The abstract of the study, "Human-Induced Changes in the Hydrology of the Western United States" (subs. req'd), led by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, states:

Ralph Nader jumps into the presidential race

“I have decided to run for president,” Ralph Nader declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning, after listing a litany of problems in America and citing polls that have found citizen discontent with the direction of the country and with both main political parties. Washington, D.C. is “corporate-occupied territory,” he said, and he […]

Ralph Nader announces his presidential run, calls for carbon tax

Nader is officially in the race — and he is now the only big-name presidential candidate who supports a carbon tax. On the issues page of his campaign site, Nader also declares “No to nuclear power, solar energy first.” Only solar? Sounds like he hasn’t thought a lot about renewable energy since the ’70s.

A metaphor for climate change and modern politics, in film form

That would be the title of An Inconvenient Truth, if it had been produced by the Coen brothers -- since young men (and women) are poised to suffer through the worst consequences of our immoral short-sightedness. (This is not such an odd pairing of movies, considering that No Country star Tommy Lee Jones was the Harvard roommate of Al Gore).

I do think No Country for Old Men deserves the Oscar for best movie of the year because it is brilliantly constructed and acted -- and delivers a powerful, coherent message to all of us from the Coen brothers and Cormac McCarthy.

Yet this is easily one of the most depressing and nihilistic major movies ever made. On the nihilistic/life-affirming story scale, where Hamlet is a 1 and It's a Wonderful Life is a 10, No Country is easily a zero and perhaps deserves negative numbers.

Normally I do not like movies with an unhappy ending, and this movie arguably has about the unhappiest ending a movie of its kind could possibly have -- but the movie did seem to me a perfect metaphor for modern American politics and global warming.

[You can read the basic plotline here. Since Wikipedia is untroubled by spoilers, with nary a warning, why should I be? Note to people who haven't seen the movie: (1) I'm assuming you have figured out that when a film is titled No Country for Old Men, you can be sure it does not end well, and (2) this post will not make much sense to you.]

Water wars!

The Georgia legislature, perhaps driven slightly around the bend by the drought battering its state, is attempting to claim part of the Tennessee River, which it claims is rightly Georgia’s based on the original border drawn between the states in 1818. Chattanooga, Tenn., says, um, no, we’ll keep the river, thanks. Can a shooting war […]

A safety valve in Lieberman-Warner is senseless

I see no point whatsoever in passing a climate bill this year that includes a safety valve. I have blogged on this before, but it bears repeating as we appear to be getting to the endgame negotiations in the Senate on the Lieberman-Warner bill. Bottom line:

If you want to get a 60% to 80% greenhouse gas cut in four decades, you just can't waste time with safety valves. We need to get to a price of $30 to $40 a ton for carbon dioxide as soon as possible -- and if it needs to go higher than that because conservatives block the progressives and moderates from legislating aggressive technology deployment strategies that would keep costs low, well, as the saying goes, "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it."

If you just want to pass a bill that makes it seem like you're doing something while in fact doing little, then go for it! But surely a year's delay (waiting for a somewhat wiser Congress and an infinitely wiser president) is better than a pointless bill.

In an article titled "Sponsors of Senate emissions bill seek compromise on cost provisions," Greenwire (subs. req'd) reports: