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Something you need to know

The DVD of An Inconvenient Truth is released tomorrow.

Speaking of which, it's entirely possible that AIT will win the 2007 Oscar for Best Documentary. Wouldn't that be something.

Take bets on the long future

Much of environmentalism is about long-term thinking. If you are looking for a meta-narrative, I'd say most people who define themselves as environmentalists are motivated by the desire to see something they love -- clean air, beautiful places, whales, or whathaveyou -- stick around a bit longer.

That's why I think the Long Now Foundation, dedicated to the promotion of long-term thinking, is one of the coolest organizations around.

The U.S. organic cotton industry has a tough row to hoe

The view from the Panoche Cotton Gin outside Firebaugh, Calif., reveals a great deal about the state of the cotton industry in the U.S. A generation ago, fields of cotton surrounded the gin as far as the eye could see. Today, the gin — a warehouse-sized plant that can clean and bundle dozens of tons […]

Sadly, it’s behind a paid subscription wall

Over on New York Times $elect, Steven Johnson -- author of Everything Bad Is Good for You and the just-released The Ghost Map -- is writing a blog called "Urban Planet":

Over the next month, I'll explore the many facets of our urban planet and its future, drawing upon the themes that were visible, in embryo, 150 years ago in the streets of London: the peril and promise of density, local knowledge, the importance of public health systems, and the strength of neighborhoods. I look forward to hearing -- and responding to -- your own stories and reflections on urban life.

Too bad only a tiny fraction of you can afford to read it.

The delightful travails of a fading climate denier

In all the chaos of moving, I missed out on the latest episodes of Inhofenfreude.

First and most cosmically delectable is the news that Sen. John Warner plans to unceremoniously boot Inhofe from his seat as chair of the Senate EPW committee. Inhofe was already going to lose out when the Dems took over, but now his crazed hands are being pried from the controls even of this lame duck session. Oh, the ignominy! Oh, joyous laughter ringing through the Roberts household!

Even better is Inhofe's reaction:

"I have long been a friend of John Warner; however, I think he has misunderstood the rules. I intend to retain my leadership position in the 110th Congress, returning as the Ranking Member of the EPW Committee," Senator Inhofe said.

Heeeeee hee hee! Tra la la. Is it Christmas already?

Umbra on eating locally in winter

Dear Umbra, I live in New Hampshire, and I am getting ready for the long, cold winter. I try to eat locally, but with no year-round growing season here and such a dense population, most of the food comes from elsewhere. I was wondering what I could do to reduce my impact during the winter […]

Rail freight is more efficient than truck freight

So far the efficiency examples we've discussed have been glamorous new technology -- electric cars, next-gen light rail. But what may be the oldest mass industrial technology in the U.S. also has huge potential for saving energy: freight trains.

I couldn’t do it

While I was wandering around on YouTube I stumbled across a segment from CNBC featuring Ana Unruh Cohen, Director of Environmental Policy at the Center for American Progress and periodic Gristmill contributor, squaring off with Ben Lieberman from the Heritage Foundation. The subject was possible changes in energy policy under the new Democratic Congress. Watch it:

A cool new ad campaign from Victoria, Australia

This article, in which Al Gore lays out his basic position on nukes, contains nothing much new. He's said it all before in, among other places, our interview.

Thanks to Gristmill reader LA, however, for drawing my attention to this intriguing final bit:

Mr Gore ... yesterday met with [Victoria, Australia] Premier Steve Bracks and his deputy John Thwaites. He described Victoria as forward thinking on climate change and said he would take a number of local initiatives back to the United States.

He was particularly impressed with the Bracks Government's "black balloons" advertising campaign, which links household energy usage with the amount of carbon dioxide it releases into the air.

"I'm going to take that ad back and show it to some folks there, maybe put it on YouTube," he said.

Well, I don't know if Gore put it there, but the ad's on YouTube now. Here it is:

Is Western time on the outs?

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness," wrote John Muir (in a posthumous collection of his notes called John of the Mountains).

Yes, but why? Why does a wild forest take us into the universe more surely than the open sea? Or a vast metropolis teeming with people?

This month in Orion, critic and novelist John Berger takes a crack at that question in an essay called "Between Forests" (not online, unfortunately). Berger takes the forest photographs of Czech photographer Jitka Hanzlová as a point of departure. A glance at one of Hanzlová's mysterious photographs from her Forest series gets across Berger's essential point -- they have been taken "from the inside" of the forest. He writes: