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A new essay

What follows is a new essay by Bill McKibben, addressing -- in the context of reviewing five new books -- just how close we are to ecological catastrophe, and what reasons there are for hope.

The essay will appear in the Nov. 16 edition of the New York Review of Books. The NYRB editors gave Tom Engelhardt's excellent TomDispatch permission to publish it in advance; he in turn gave me permission to run it here. Thanks to Tom and to the NYRB editors.

Don't miss this one.

Who’s doing what

It's official: Obama is thinking about running. Of course the knock against him -- the only one that will stick, I imagine, but a big one -- is his lack of experience. For my part, I tend to think that character and circumstance define a presidency. Presidents are out of their depth the minute they walk into the office. No one is ever prepared to become the world's most powerful human being. It's how they react, who they hire, what kind of people they are, and above all, what happens in the world around them that ultimately matters.

A recipe for baked French toast

One of the events I most look forward to every autumn is my friend Ken's Post-Vermont Brunch. He does not use the phrase "Post-Vermont" dismissively, as in "Vermont is so last season! Sugar Maples have totally jumped the shark!" No. What he means is, he has now come back from his annual trip to Vermont, and returns triumphant, bearing gifts.

He brings home local, seasonal Vermont products: bread from a small bakery, fresh-picked apples, locally-smoked bacon, and maple syrup. He beams his brunch beacon into the midnight sky, and a fuzzy image of Mrs. Butterworth hovers against the racing moonlit clouds, alerting his friends to assemble. (Actually he sends us emails.) We converge upon Ken's home at the appointed date and time and the breakfast-type merriment begins.

You listen

A Q&A with Tom Friedman on the energy crisis and his new movie Big Oil.

The one does not get the other

The mainstream media has a bead on the blogosphere. They've got their story.

"The blogs" is now short-hand for "conspiricists, wackos, and (worst of all) partisans." If a nightly news producer needs something slightly outre said, something outside the orbit of polite political dialogue, "the blogs" are happy to say it for them. There are, after all, a lot of blog posts. They're bound to say anything.

This makes the media lazy. Exhibit A: CBS Nightly News did a story on the widespread belief that Bush & Rove are manipulating gas prices in advance of the mid-term elections. We're told the blogs are fairly abuzz with suspicion.

For this, they mustered two blog screenshots:

New mine safety official not so good on the whole mine safety thing

I have a sneaking suspicion that sometimes when I link to stuff, y'all don't herd over en masse to read it. WTF?

With that in mind, I hope the excellent Justin Rood will forgive me for just poaching this entire post from TPMmuckraker:

Haven’t bashed the guy in a while

What with Inhofe capturing all the earth-fu**ing-lunatic attention on Gristmill of late, it's been way too long since we pointed out the earth-fu**ing-lunacy of Rep. Richard "Dick" Pombo (R-Calif.). Let's look around for some Pombo bashing, shall we?

Oh, look! Here's some in the NYT:

In a little-noticed provision of the much-reviled Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act -- which the House passed in June and the Senate will take up when Congress returns -- Mr. Pombo lowered the royalty rate for oil shale from 12.5 percent to 1 percent. Should the day arrive when the price of shale oil becomes competitive, this could turn out to be an extraordinary giveaway of federal revenue (most oil shale lies under federal land) and a huge incentive to wreak environmental damage.

And here's some more in Rolling Stone, which ranks Pombo the seventh worst Congressman (only seventh?):

Not going so well

The political pundits haven't noticed, probably because they habitually put the health of the planet at the bottom of their list of concerns, but this week on national television, David Letterman pointed out that the Current Occupant of the White House is trying to present himself as an Environmental President.

It's a struggle, as you can see:

What’s the best balance of green and cheap?

So, I find myself in a bona fide environmental quandary. (Perhaps I should write a letter to Umbra!) My wife and I just bought a house -- we'll be moving in in a couple of weeks. A few days ago we ripped up the (tattered, cat-pee-stinking) carpet, to discover that there are not, marketing claims to the contrary, "hardwoods throughout." Most of the floor, in fact, looks like some kind of particle board.

Long story short: we need new floors throughout the house.

Unbalanced mercury report has green groups in an uproar

Conservation groups are fired up about "Seafood Choices: Balancing Benefits and Risks," a new report released on Tuesday, by the Institute of Medicine. The report attempts to undermine government advice by downplaying the risks of mercury in seafood, especially with regard to children and America's number one most heavily consumed fish: tuna. On a completely unrelated note, the panel that wrote the report has multiple ties to the food industry, including the tuna industry ...

>>Read the report (if you don't mind paying $55)

>>Check out Oceana's response