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Obama will outline energy plan in New Hampshire

Barack Obama will outline his energy plan later today in a speech in Portsmouth, N.H. Expect him to laud cap-and-trade and energy efficiency, propose spending $150 billion over the next decade on clean energy R&D, and blame politicians for not being ballsy enough to make bold proposals for tackling global warming.

Like they do it in Italy

From Der Spiegel: It’s not easy to be punctual for a meeting with Stefano Cimicchi. Parking places are hard to come by in Orvieto, even if cars are still legal. Cars in the city center stick out like a sore thumb among strolling pedestrians, who move to the sides of the streets with studied slowness. […]

Brain food for your day of rest

Tabs, tabs, so many tabs open. Time for a whirlwind tour of my browser! Got a website? Here are 11 carbon-neutral hosting options. Environmental websites that effectively use graphics and imagery to convey the scope of a problem. I particularly like Gapminder. If Bill Clinton didn’t clear it up for you, the Christian Science Monitor […]

Cause for humility

Paul Gipe opens one of his books with a story about a big celebration of a new wind project in So. California that was marred when, a few hours beforehand, the turbine oversped and destroyed itself. An executive with the company building the project said something like, "I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that the wind turbine destroyed itself. The good news is that we didn't have to evacuate Los Angeles."

Popped into my head when I read this: "Huge nuclear-safe containment to be built over the Chernobyl sarcophagus: The 'New Safe Confinement' will be an arch-shaped structure 105 metres high, 150 metres long and with a span of 260 metres."

New sportswear retailer donates to green groups

Check out Planet Protect Sportswear, a brand new retailer that vends responsibly made items and gives 10 percent of its profits to either Earth Share of Oregon or Oceana (workplace of intrepid Gristmill contributor Andrew Sharpless). Planet Protect welcomes freelance artists to design T-shirts. Or if you happen to know a producer of sustainable swimsuits, […]

Priceless Colbert

A no-makeup diet is healthier for you and the planet

Did you know you can absorb up to five lbs. of chemicals every year from make-up and other "beauty" products? Yikes. A British paper presents that and other scary facts — "the average woman eats, albeit unwittingly, five lipsticks a year, which in her lifetime is the equivalent volume of 1.5 blocks of lard" — […]

Why bother criticizing S&N?

The question has been raised: Why spend time "debunking" S&N when they seem to be well-meaning folks struggling for a genuine solution to global warming, unlike, say, Bjorn Lomborg? Aside from the fact that they are adding great confusion and misinformation to a critical debate, the answer is simple -- they aren't well-meaning.

S&N spend far more time attacking the environmental community (and Al Gore and even Rachel Carson) than they do proposing a viable solution. Worse, they don't even attack the real environmental community -- they spend their time creating a strawman that is mostly a right-wing stereotype of environmentalists.

S&N's core argument is that environmentalists only preach doom and gloom and sacrifice, and that solving global warming ...

... will require a more optimistic narrative from the environmental community. Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, like Silent Spring, was considered powerful because it marshaled the facts into an effective (read: apocalyptic) story ...

In promoting the inconvenient truth that humans must limit their consumption and sacrifice their way of life to prevent the world from ending, environmentalists are not only promoting a solution that won't work, they've discouraged Americans from seeing the big solutions at all. For Americans to be future-oriented, generous, and expansive in their thinking, they must feel secure, wealthy, and strong.

Gore has never promoted such an inconvenient truth -- they should read his book or listen to his speeches -- and indeed I don't know any major environmentalist or environmental group that has promoted such a message. Just spend some time on the climate websites for NRDC, Environmental Defense, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace. They all support (most of) the same big solutions S&N do, they just don't think you get those solutions the way S&N do (i.e., a massive government spending program).

Friday music blogging: Josh Ritter

It’s been a great year for music. In addition to fantastic new albums from Cloud Cult, Modest Mouse, Okkervil River, and Band of Horses, there’s the latest from everyone’s favorite “new Dylan,” Josh Ritter. Ritter’s talent for marrying hooky melodies with knotty, literate lyrics has won him some passionate fans — more than one Gristie […]

A Parisian tries out the city’s new rent-a-bike program

The following is a guest essay from my sister, Margie Rynn, who has lived in Paris for seven years.

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It took me awhile to be willing to try Velib', the new rent-a-bike program now available all over the streets of Paris.

I love the idea: anyone can pick up a bike at any metro station or anywhere there's a "borne" (stand) of bikes, ride around for half an hour, and then leave it at any Velib' stand. That first half hour is free, and not only that, the bikes themselves are extremely cool, a sort of futuristic über-bike that makes you feel like there is nothing more high-tech and advanced than a bicycle.

For me, though, there was a problem: traffic. I have nothing against Parisians in general, but once they get into a car, these otherwise reasonable people become a hoard of aggressive louts with little concern for the lives of their fellow men, women, and children. Merely driving in this city sends me into a state of extreme anxiety; now you are expecting me to ride a bike?