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Mmm, pollutocrats

The Simpsons flee Springfield in the dark of night.

TM and © 2007 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Fans of The Simpsons have had to wait 18 years for the first full-length feature film about the family, opening on July 27. Although the hype leading up to the release date has included unique publicity stunts -- such as a contest between 14 Springfields across the U.S. to determine who gets to host the hometown premiere, and the conversion of selected 7-Elevens to Kwik-E-Marts, complete with KrustyO's, Buzz Cola, and Squishees -- the film's producers have kept mum about the details of the plot.

However, the word on the street is that Homer, his new pet pig, and a leaking silo full of pig droppings somehow spur a large-scale environmental crisis that must be contained by the U.S. EPA. The EPA chief is a villainous Russ Cargill, who reports to U.S. President Arnold Schwarzenegger (voiced, respectively, by Simpsons veterans Albert Brooks and Harry Shearer). Somewhere along the way, Erin Brockovich makes a cameo as herself.

The Guardian got a peek at 10 minutes of the film, and notes that a cameo of Green Day in the film has the band members "poisoned and drowning in the fetid Lake Springfield after interrupting a Duff Beer-sponsored show 'to say one thing about the environment.'" Methinks that the water pollution may link back to the pig-poop issue, but that's just wild speculation an educated guess on my part. Another spoiler is that Lisa is rumored to develop a crush on a green activist while pulling together a school presentation on climate change, appropriately entitled "An Irritating Truth."

But we'll all have to wait for another week and a half to find out exactly how it all plays out, unless Fox wants to give Grist staffers a prescreening (hint, hint).

A new report with numbers and stuff

Our discussion of carbon offsets has been rather hand-wavey — lots of intuitions and moral judgments and gut feelings flying around. This obviously offended the gods of wonkitude, who have now seen fit to deliver unto us a report on the voluntary carbon credit market, containing some sweet, sweet numbers and graphs. The report was […]

Can’t They Just Use the Ocean?

Schwarzenegger announces $5.9 billion plan to battle drought California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced a $5.9 billion plan to prepare for his state’s almost-certain continued drought and population boom. Taking the need to douse Big Agriculture as a given, Schwarzenegger called for construction of new reservoirs and dams — but, true to his Greeninator reputation, […]

The incredible shrinking American

Could our neglect of health and the environment be making us shorter? According to recent studies, chaps in Holland are an average of two inches taller than American men these days, whereas in the 19th century, our lads towered an average two and a half inches over them and all of the rest of western […]

Here’s wishing you plentiful petroleum

I give you Trilby Lundberg, publisher of the Lundberg Survey of gas prices: I’m hoping that consumers will see through the rhetoric about consuming less, demanding less, as faulty. It is not a given that consuming less will be good for our economy or for our personal freedom. It is not even established for our […]

Jam Plan Is Toast

NYC mayor’s traffic-reducing proposal shot down, for now New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s congestion-fee proposal, reportedly down to the wire on Monday, is now just down, period. The plan would have charged a fee for Manhattan-bound vehicles during peak hours, but the state Senate adjourned without voting on the measure after Democrats made it […]

Deader Than Ever

Biofuels could contribute to historically big Gulf of Mexico dead zone Still think corn-based biofuels will save the world? Here’s another piece of the no-they-won’t puzzle: Researchers say more intensive farming of more land in the Midwestern U.S. — in part a result of the push for more corn production — could contribute to the […]

Pretty Please, With Cuomo On Top

New York state sues ExxonMobil over oil spill foot-dragging A shot has been fired in the quiet oil-spill battle in Brooklyn, N.Y.’s Greenpoint neighborhood: the state has sued ExxonMobil to force the cleanup of the estimated 8 million gallons of oil and petroleum byproducts still underground after a 1950 explosion. The spill, larger than the […]

Pretty much what you thought it was

Six years and a protracted legal battle later, The Washington Post has finally gotten its hands on a list of who met with Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force in 2001. Turns out it’s a bunch of oil and gas execs. Shocking. This is my favorite ‘graph from the story: The task force issued its report […]

All the kids are talking about it

Today in Greenwire, Darren Samuelsohn rightly notes that the big — and by big we’re talking multi-billions of dollars — question around a cap-and-trade system is how the credits are initially allocated. Do you give more to utilities with lots of coal plants, because they need help transitioning to a low-carbon future? Do you give […]