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Watch out for that flaming bag of McNuggets

I'm so spoiled now that I live in bike-path-licious Boulder, Colorado. I hardly have to interact with cars anymore when cycling to most points in the city. But just a few weeks ago, before I moved here, I was out there with all the other Colorado cyclists in traffic getting assaulted.

Sure, most assaults are verbal and harmless-ish, but then there are the ones that aren't. This article from today's Los Angeles Times leads with a list of one guy's experience in L.A.:

Scott Sing has had a tire iron hurled at him, a water bottle thrown at his head and been bombarded with racial epithets. And all he was trying to do was ride his bike on Los Angeles city streets.

His cycling and running brethren tell similar tales -- of being peppered with flying objects, cursed or otherwise assaulted -- and those don't even include the stories of near-misses and actual collisions.

A partial rundown of my own misadventures in bicycle-motorist interactions include being run off the road thrice (Loveland, Colo.; Durango, Colo.; and Skokomish Indian Reservation on Hwy 101, Wash.), hit by cars twice (Seattle, Wash., both times), and had the following items tossed at me from moving vehicles:

Sign me up

This is the true story of seven strangers, picked to live in an energy-efficient house, work together, and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting green. From the press release [PDF]: The Real World house will include everything from solar energy solutions to bamboo flooring, […]

A funny for word nerds

This is, I suppose, vaguely environmental, but I’m only blogging it because it’s hilarious. At least if you’re a word nerd like me.

Correcting two misunderstandings

As we discuss "cap-and-steal" (aka "cap-and-trade"), "cap-and-sell" (aka "cap-and-auction"), and carbon taxes -- three ways of putting prices on carbon -- it is worth remembering that putting a price on greenhouse-gas emissions is not enough to bring them under control. Gristmill is full of posts showing ways to save carbon at a profit. David posted an interview on Recycled Energy today that points to something that has been known, but mostly ignored, for over thirty years.

I can, and have in the past, posted extensive theoretical musings on this. But the bottom line is that if we are ignoring available savings at current prices, it seems likely that we would continue to ignore savings at artificially higher prices.

This sometimes makes people jump to the opposite extreme; if (as I insist) we can cut emissions by 90 percent or more, at prices comparable to fossil fuel, why do we need to put a price on carbon alone?

The answer is while we can cut emissions at a total cost comparable to what we currently pay for fossil fuels, that does not mean that every component is individually cheaper. The existence of market imperfections does not mean that markets don't have a role to play in solving the problem.

Let's take green buildings as a concrete example. There are a fair number of green commercial buildings that consume 30 percent of the energy of the typical U.S. building, and pay back the costs of those savings in four years or less.

Turns out that NAFTA superhighway is superfictitious

Last year I caught wind of concern on the far right about a "NAFTA Superhighway," an (alleged) gargantuan new road, four football fields wide, that would plow straight up through the country from the Mexican border, through Texas, through Minnesota, all the way up into Canada. Foreigners would own parts of it! The World Bank […]

A match made in heaven?

Energy efficiency and renewable power together are better than either alone, according to a recent report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy and the American Council on Renewable Energy. Not a shocking conclusion, but an important one, especially in a world where it seems that all types of zero-carbon power are competing against each other for funding.

The report finds that synergies between renewables and efficiency would cut greenhouse-gas emissions more effectively than either alone. What kind of synergies?

Hillary Clinton tells Grist about her environmental plans, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: How Green Is Your Candidate? Flo Nays Bring in the Reserves Someone Alert Ben and Jerry With Safety Like This, Who Needs Danger? Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Something For the Boys The Weigh of All Flesh Listify Me

Even though conventional wisdom says you need him to pass major environmental legislation

Whether House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell is a potential friend or an implacable foe is not only the subject of intense debate here at Gristmill, but a key strategic question for the environmental movement and the Democratic Party. I recently wrote an article for The American Prospect about how Dingell's fellow congressional Democrats are abandoning him as he tries to obstruct meaningful energy and climate legislation -- and implied that his diminished power means Democrats and environmentalists can go around him without worrying about fallout from not having him at the table.

I want to use this opportunity to provide a little more information about how I reached that conclusion, in a way not possible within the length constraints of the original American Prospect article.

First, I was struck, and a little surprised, by the almost unanimous unwillingness of Democrats to say anything meaningful in support of Dingell. While all stopped short of explicit on-the-record attacks, they generally responded to my questions about their support for Dingell with harsh criticisms of his policies, largely untempered by the personal praise members usually bestow on even their roughest opponents.

Algeria …

… sets out to become the Saudi Arabia of solar energy.

Hope they don’t want any corn

What? A sharply hotter climate and abundant CO2 aren't good for field crops? But, but ... the coal lobby Greening Earth Society said they would be!

Fitting: the photo accompanying this story in The Detroit News shows a huge trailer of corn being deposited at an ethanol plant.