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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:

Brace yourself

Discover magazine deems Silent Spring the 16th greatest science book ever published. Brace yourself for a flood of misinformed invective from the "DDT rulez and enviros kill African babies" crowd (about whom Tim Lambert is the authoritative source).

Also of note is No. 25: Gaia, by James Lovelock, who has recently sold his soul to the nuclear lobby.

Cause it’s nasty

As the Japanese prepare to herd thousands of dolphins into coves and stab them with spears and bash them with clubs until the sea is bright red with blood, many groups, including environmentalists, are uniting to oppose the slaughter.

A nice old-fashioned polemic

Reader WH sent along a link to this CBC Fifth Estate documentary -- "The Denial Machine" -- about the scientists and industries working to obfuscate basic global warming science. You can watch the full hour on their site.

As far as I can tell, it's a full-on polemic. The Pielkes of the world will no doubt tsk-tsk, lament the lack of proper qualifications and hedges, and scold it for being shrill. But I say: more polemic, please.

Hopefully tenacious butt kicking will ensue

Eliot Spitzer's eco-lieutenant to be made executive director of NRDC:

Rubber Ducky, You’re Not the One

San Francisco set to enact first-in-nation ban on toxics in baby toys Next week, San Francisco will become the first U.S. city to ban the manufacture, distribution, and sale of baby toys containing chemicals linked to cancer and developmental delays. The prime targets — bisphenol A and phthalates — have been found in everything from […]

Flipping the Bird

Experts say risk of a bird-flu pandemic has lessened The world is safe from a bird-flu pandemic. Maybe. Last week, researchers said they’d isolated the mutations that could turn the virus into a human-to-human juggernaut, while another team unveiled an “MChip” test that identifies the distinctive flu strain, which has caused 153 human deaths since […]