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This Bertrand Russell quote seems relevant to today’s climate debates

This quote from Bertrand Russell just caught my eye:

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.

I think the climate change deniers would do very well to keep this in mind.

Microsoft’s Vista boasts energy-saving features, but does that mean it’s eco-friendly?

Most of the chatter about Vista, Microsoft’s new operating system, centers on whether the techies in Redmond have outsmarted the hackers this time around. But might the system also slow destruction of the environmental variety? Microsoft is touting Vista’s new energy-saving features, even as critics are pointing out that the system has some eco-downsides as […]

Extinctions, that is

I know I've been all over Mongabay lately, but there's just so much good stuff there. First on the list is a longish article about a study in Biotropica, which suggests that instead of losing up to seventy-five percent of our biodiversity as many scientists fear, we may only lose twenty, maybe thirty percent tops. However, there are no guarantees that come with the study. The optimistic figures, if you can call them that, are largely the result of declining rural populations and the subsistence farming that goes with it. In short, saving much of our biodiversity hinges on continued urbanization. Grab a beer and go read it.

Beware the stupid, it burns

Sens. Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe, chair and ranking minority member of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, respectively, debate global warming on Larry King’s show. Warning: mild-to-intense discomfort may be experienced upon exposure. (via Hugg)

Il-Legal Seafood

I am in the midst of writing up a Valentine's Day menu and I thought I'd include "Angels on Horseback" as the appetizer (aka oysters wrapped in bacon). But I have made the grim discovery that it is no longer possible to buy shucked oysters in Massachusetts!

That’s it for me and industrial meat

The other day I went to Costco with my older boy — during the Super Bowl, for stealth. It took a bit of persuading to get him there, so I told him about the ladies who stand around and hand out food samples. Everything was going fine. A mozzarella ball, yum. A little square of […]

This Old House does a green renovation in Austin

Beginning tomorrow, PBS show This Old House will start airing an eight-part series focused on a green remodeling job in Austin, Texas. In a preview for the series, host Kevin O’Connor says they’re renovating the 1926 bungalow in an effort to show that “green [building] no longer has to be experimental and it doesn’t have […]

A new path forward for climate change campaigners

((brightlines_include))

Our climate agenda is inadequate and may even be detrimental to the sort of effort U.S. environmentalists must now undertake. I'd like to offer for comment an alternative "bright lines" framework for climate action, and propose a shift in role and agenda for U.S. environmentalists that takes account of the circumstances in which we find ourselves and squarely faces the almost incomprehensible challenge before us.

Our goal, put starkly and simply, is to prevent the planned investment of $20 trillion over the next 25 years to increase fossil fuel supply, substituting in its place a crash global program -- capitalized at the same level -- to cut emissions, improve efficiencies, and develop renewables.

The choice should not be viewed, in the frequently invoked Robert Frost imagine, as " two roads diverged." The world is committed whole hog to fossil fuels, and there is no other road -- yet.

To create one will require restructuring the world's largest corporations, inventing appealing, low- or zero-carbon consumer products, and convincing the world's most powerful, nuclear-weapon-equipped nations to leave their reserves of oil, gas, and coal in the ground. We have less than a decade to do it.

Tectonic social change on such a scale is rapid, haphazard, and non-linear. It cannot be achieved in the time left to us by incremental, measured steps. The image of change we should carry in our minds is not Cape Wind or Toyota Prius, but the Berlin Wall crashing down.

Umbra on fireplace inserts

Dear Umbra, Our fireplace is terribly drafty when we’re not using it, and not very functional when we do. Despite the cheery blaze, most of the heat seems to go up the chimney. I tend to burn those “green” coffee logs since setting a real fire isn’t worth the trouble. My question is: should I […]

Global warming ads taking over the world

Avaaz.org, international sibling to Moveon.org, launched this global TV ad on climate change this week, urging viewers to take action and encourage their political leaders to follow suit. “Avaaz” means “voice” or “song” in several languages, including Hindi, Urdu, and Farsi, and is used here to signify the lifting of voices all over the world […]