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Biodiesel rage

From the Seattle PI:

More than 1,300 people -- some shouting "revolution" -- took over Fisher Pavilion at the Seattle Center on Sunday. Look what's happening out in the streets, they said: Biodiesel is coming of age. It's all the rage.

Part trade show, part strategy session, part cheerleading camp, the fifth annual NW Biodiesel Forum brought together biodiesel enthusiasts to learn about peak oil, alternative fuels, mass transit and, in a wrap-up discussion, "Biodiesel in the Northwest -- The Revolution Has Begun!"

Many of these enthusiasts are people who have purchased diesel vehicles so they can burn biodiesel in them and every last one of them has at least one bumper sticker to let you know it:

Control Your Emissions

British population think tank shames large families Got your 10-foot pole handy? You’ll need it for this story: U.K. think tank Optimum Population Trust published a report yesterday declaring that having a large family is akin to such eco-crimes as leaving lights on, driving an SUV, and tossing plastic bags in the trash. Forget carbon […]

This Land Was Paid By You and Me

Bush administration raises park fees, advocates cry foul The Bush administration is consistent-izing rates at 135 national parks, a move that will see some fees double. It will also tie future rates to inflation, raising them every three years. A National Park Service spokesperson says the shift is an attempt to simplify the current rate […]

Current Events

Wind power is controversial but should keep on keeping on, says report U.S. wind-power capacity has quadrupled in the past six years and could eventually produce up to 7 percent of the nation’s electricity. Easy-breezy? Not quite: Wind-industry growth lacks “any truly coordinated planning,” says a report from the National Academy of Sciences. Developers and […]

Interview with Pachauri

ThinkProgress has an interview with Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC. Worth a listen.

The Brainstorm From Hell

Delegates gather in Germany to picture a post-Kyoto future The ongoing effort to figure out what in blazes to do when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 is getting a boost this week and next, with officials from more than 160 countries gathering in Bonn, Germany, for a two-week brainstorm. The U.N. Framework Convention on […]

Traded In His Chevy for a Cad Attack

Speaking in Detroit, Obama tells Big Auto where to go Presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) took his rhetoric to Detroit yesterday, challenging the U.S. auto industry to get with the times. “The need to drastically change our energy policy is no longer a debatable proposition,” he said in a speech to the city’s Economic […]

The RFFI way

The NYT has an update on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the Northeast coalition of states establishing their own carbon market. It’s promising that they seem to have learned the two key lessons of the European carbon market experience, which stumbled coming out of the gate. The first lesson: don’t give away credits. Participants […]

It’s like riding a bike …

What happens when a major urban freeway burns down? Chaos, right? Gridlock! Except not: Traffic congestion was down Monday and Tuesday. The amount of time drivers were stuck in traffic moving slower than 60 mph was down 8 percent around the entire Bay Area, according to Caltrans data. Congestion on Oakland freeways, meanwhile, was down […]

Excellent writing

About eleventy-hundred people have written to draw my attention to an article in the Wall Street Journal about bike living in the Netherlands and Denmark. It’s worthy of the attention — it’s rare to see biking taken so seriously and written about with such an eye for detail and color, at least in a U.S. […]