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Arguments supporting government subsidies of agrofuels are getting polished

This is my formal rebuttal to David Morris's "case for corn-based fuel." I'm using my access to the bully pulpit to pull it out of the comments field.

How did the use of ethanol end up alongside tyranny and torture as an evil to be conquered?

That's easy. A whole lot of real smart people have been giving corn ethanol a lot of thought and have found that "an evil to be conquered" isn't a bad description. In smaller quantities, it does smaller amounts of damage, but as quantities increase, so does the damage. I mean, what's not to like about a fuel that milks billions from taxpayers, increases the cost of food all around the world, exacerbates the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, and returns no more energy than it produces?

Two great tastes?

Christina Larson has the latest on the flowering cooperation between greens and the hook & bullet crowd. This bit is funny: Hunters are predominantly male. Yet the folks who’ve been most successful in reaching out and forging partnerships haven’t been green dudes, talking man to man — but rather the enviro ladies. A few possible […]

So says a new report

Everything you could possibly want to know about nuclear power -- and its (limited) potential as a potential climate solution -- can be found in the new Keystone Center Report with the less-than-captivating title "Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding."

Reuters is confused in its article on the report, "Nuclear Power Can't Curb Global Warming -- Report," and actually overstates the case for nuclear:

A hearing before the Science Committee

There’s a hearing on solar power today in the House Science Committee. Sounds like they’re focusing on concentrating solar power and thermal storage — smart. Note this: [Subcommittee on Energy and Environment Vice-Chair] Rep. [Gabrielle] Giffords expects to soon introduce "The Solar Energy Research and Advancement Act of 2007" to address issues in solar research, […]

Convincing evidence for the central role of protest and a troubling cost-benefit analysis

The most important and relevant research for U.S. environmentalists is being conducted by Jon Agnone, a sociologist at the University of Washington. Agnone studies sources of environmentalist power -- the first social scientist to undertake a systematic analysis. His comprehensive findings are summarized in "Amplifying Public Opinion: The Policy Impact of the U.S. Environmental Movement" (PDF), appearing in the June 2007 issue of Social Forces.

Agnone compared the relative impact of public opinion, institutional advocacy, and protest on passage of federal environmental legislation between 1960-1998, using a sophisticated analytical model and data drawn from The New York Times.

Three key findings in this first-ever quantification of environmentalist power upend conventional political wisdom:

1. Protest is significantly more important than public opinion or institutional advocacy in influencing federal environmental law. Agnone found that each protest event increases the likelihood of pro-environmental legislation being passed by 1.2 percent, and moderate protest increases the annual rate of adoption by an astonishing 9.5 percent.
2. Public opinion on its own influences federal action (though less than protest), but is vastly strengthened by protest, which "amplifies" public support and, in Agnone's words, "raises the salience of public opinion for legislators." Protest and public opinion are synergistic, with a joint impact on federal policy far more dramatic than either factor alone.
3. Institutional advocacy has limited impact on federal environmental policy.

Agnone's findings demonstrate that protest is neither a historical phase of the environmental movement nor a peripheral tactic: it is the central basis of environmentalists' power. As Agnone notes, "these results lead to an important conclusion: when both protest and public opinion are at high levels, they jointly influence policy makers in ways that would be impossible if each existed without the other."

When we stopped protesting, in other words, and began to rely on advocacy and mobilizing pubic opinion alone, we threw away our single most important lever of influence. The accompanying chart shows the correspondence between declining trend lines of environmental protest and passage of federal environmental law:

We Had Joy, We Had Funds

Grist wraps up summer fundraiser with one final plea A new study shows that donating to charity activates some of the same pleasure spots in the brain that eating and sex activate. For real! And writing a check (or using PayPal) is much tidier than those other activities. So please, consider giving to Grist — […]

Search Engine Engine Search

Google pledges $10 million for plug-in hybrid research Google has gone all googly-eyed over plug-in hybrid vehicles, pledging more than $10 million in funding for the nascent technology. At a sunny photo op at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters yesterday, company officials showed off a handful of Toyota Prius and Ford Escape cars that had […]

Irony Of Iron Ease

U.S. EPA challenges California company’s plankton-seeding plan A California company’s plan to fight climate change by seeding the ocean with iron dust is drawing fire from the U.S. EPA, which reportedly woke from a nap with the vague feeling that it ought to be doing something regulatory. The company, Planktos, will use the iron to […]

Scarce Fell On Alabama

Crops, neighborly relations suffer in Southeastern U.S. drought A severe drought is gripping most of the Southeastern U.S., threatening crops, inspiring prayer, and turning neighbors against each other. “It’s one of the worst droughts in living memory in the Southeast at this point,” said Doug LeComte, a drought specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric […]

We Can’t Bear to Look

U.S. Senate squares off on ambitious energy bill All eyes are on the Senate this week as it debates a controversial Democrat-penned energy bill. (Hey! We said “all eyes”! Don’t go away.) The legislation contains several provisions that make Big Oil, Big Auto, and Big Republicans squirm: it would shift nearly $15 billion in tax […]