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The boring green-building stuff is the best

Moises Velasquez-Manoff of the Christian Science Monitor gets this exactly right:

What kind of rhetoric creates social change?

In the course of questioning James Lovelock's apocaphilia, Jon Lebkowsky says this:

A solution to the problem of global warming begins with a cautious, balanced, and rational approach, and getting there is as much about our psychological and social frameworks than our ability to analyze and predict.

The latter half of that statement seems obviously true. But why should we believe that, among our many "psychological and social frameworks," the "cautious, balanced, and rational approach" is the most important or the most effective one?

Besieged by natural-gas exploration, a Wyoming town draws the line

On a summer weekend in the high country, I talked my grandmother into taking a drive into the Wyoming Range, where she’d worked with my grandfather as a hunting guide more than 20 years earlier. We wanted to have a look at a certain 44,600 acres of forest that had been leased by companies in […]

A good interview

Worldchanging has a great interview with Andy Revkin, science/environment report for The New York Times. Here he makes a point similar one Andrew recently made:

Ultimately, the choices that confront us are values choices. The question of avoiding dangerous climate change revolves around the word dangerous, and the word dangerous is fundamentally a values-laden word. It's not a scientifically delineated term. We've been in this bollix since 1990. The negotiations leading to the Framework Conventional on Climate Change never defined the word dangerous because no one wants to touch it. The politicians know that it's too dangerous for them to define it. They toss it off to the scientists and the scientists say, "that's not our decision. We just tell you how much warming is going to happen, how much sea level will rise, and you figure out what level is unacceptable." So it goes round and round, until society really gets a clearer sense of what this boils down to: a decision about what is our responsibility to the next generation and what is our responsibility to our neighbor.

And as a special bonus, here's some footage of Revkin singing his soon-to-be-Top-40 smash, "Liberate Carbon":

Property owners bribe their own communities

Here's a perfect example of why pay-or-waive laws don't work. In the rural Oregon community of Prineville, a property owner filed a claim under Measure 37 demanding to be allowed to build his house on a specific portion of his property that's zoned otherwise. Instead of waiving the zoning law, the county council became the first in Oregon to offer taxpayer compensation instead -- to the tune of about $47,000.

It’s also the road to ‘energy security’

A few times now John has made a point I have made in the past and now shall make again (how's that for a self-referential intro?). To wit:

"Energy security" is a lopsided way of framing our energy problem, and left un-balanced, will do more harm than good.

Why? Because the shortest, cheapest route to energy security (or "independence," if you like) is through coal, and coal is ... wait for it ... the enemy of the human race. This is not just true for China and the U.S.; Germany, Britain, and even France are planning a slew of new coal plants.

For more on this crucial point, see this fantastic post from Jerome a Paris.

It’s going to come via coal

This news from China is not encouraging:

Beijing has settled on a national standard for methanol as an automotive fuel, a decision which will legitimise and bolster a market that has been growing rapidly without central government approval ...

By the time the plants, which convert coal to liquids, start producing in 2011 to 2013, China's oil demand will have doubled, allowing methanol to supply about 10 per cent of the market.

And they want us to stay in Iraq

Speaking of the Iraq War, you may have heard that VP Dick Cheney was "summoned" to Saudi Arabia recently by the crown prince. You may also have heard that Bush recently resumed his "stay the course" rhetoric, vowing not to withdraw troops no matter what the Baker Commission says.

Seems those two facts are connected. Seems Saudi Arabia really doesn't want us to leave Iraq, which they apparently communicated to Cheney in no uncertain terms.

Now they're openly threatening that if the U.S. withdraws they will arm Sunni militias (to back them against Iran-armed Shia militias) and sharply boost oil production, thereby cutting oil prices in half and undercutting Iran's economy.

This is particularly comforting:

It’s so sad it’s almost funny

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court considered its first global warming case ever. At issue is whether carbon dioxide falls under the Clean Air Act's definition of "pollutant" and thus whether the EPA has the responsibility to regulate emissions thereof. The ramifications of their decision could be huge -- yet this is what went on in those vaunted halls of justice yesterday:

An interview with Travis Bradford, author of Solar Revolution

Solar power has been the Next Big Thing for decades now, yet it remains a niche player in the energy world. The problem of intermittency is unsolved, up-front capital costs remain high, and surging demand for polysilicon, a key component of solar panels, has recently outstripped supply, stifling production. Travis Bradford. So when someone claims […]