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The New Nuisance Thing

California sues automakers over greenhouse-gas emissions California sued the six largest auto manufacturers yesterday, saying that vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions are a public nuisance and seeking compensation for damage to the state’s air, water supplies, coast, forests, wildlife, and people. “Basically, what we are saying is, it’s old-fashioned economics. You should pay for the damage you […]

Tech-alekahi Tech-aheiny Ho

Bush admin. releases plan to fight global warming with technology As part of its 2002 plan to fight global warming (what, you never heard about that one?), the Bush administration promised a technology-development plan. A mere four years later, it has arrived! To the surprise of absolutely no one, the “Climate Change Technology Program Strategic […]

Latest E. coli outbreak should prompt rethink of industrial agriculture

For the ninth time since 1995, California’s Salinas Valley — the “nation’s salad bowl” — has been implicated in an E. coli scare involving salad greens. Avoid E. coli, buy L. coli. Photo: iStockphoto As I write this, no definitive explanation has emerged for the latest outbreak, this one involving pre-washed, bagged spinach. But while […]

Carbon must be made expensive

From the minority desk at the Senate Environment Committee:

It usually is

... or does "Climate Change Technology Program Strategic Plan" sound like something a 14-year-old would nail to the wall of his treehouse? The only thing I'd add would be "Climate Change Technology Program Strategic Plan Laser Patrol." Cool.

As India modernizes, farmers and public health pay the price.

India's current burst of free-market reform and official attempts at "modernization" are by no means the area's first.

As Mike Davis shows in his luminous Late Victorian Holocausts (2001), the subcontinent's 19th century British rulers imposed an economic agenda literally ripped wholesale from the pages of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), that bible of free-market dogmatists.

Davis lays out in devastating detail (first chapter available for free here) how in the 1870s, high-living colonial administrators dismantled the old Indian system for handling droughts, replacing it with one in which the price of grain floated freely based on global supply and demand. Thus, when a drought struck a grain-producing region in India, the grain price surged. The only buyers who could then afford it happened to reside in merry olde England.

The subcontinent's railroad system, paid for by taxes imposed on the Indians, very efficiently carried grain being produced in the non-drought areas to ports for shipment to the mother country. Its cutting-edge telegraph infrastructure, also financed by colonial taxes, transmitted price hikes rapidly. Famine thus rippled throughout India, including in non-drought-stricken areas.

Tens of millions perished in a series of famines in late 19th century India; before, when drought struck a certain area, food would move in from luckier areas and famines were rare. Davis claims the English took advantage of these not-so-natural disasters to consolidate its grip on the subcontinent. It was all very efficient, really.

Today in India, modernization is bringing new food-related woes: growing despair among farmers and surging diabetes rates.

Wonder if that’s in Bush’s plan too

Compare and contrast. Read Bush's plan. Then read this.

California filed a global warming lawsuit on Wednesday against Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and three other automakers, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have cost the state millions of dollars.

Which do you think will be more effective?

Look on the bright side

The liberal media is always trying to claim that global warming (if it exists -- scientists are confused on that point) is bad. But just check out these pics of Greenland's burgeoning agricultural industry. Potatoes! Broccoli!

Also, think what it all means to the flip-flop industry!

It’s just funny

Call me a junior high boy, but the fact that the Zurich-based Shahneshin Foundation is giving Shrinkage Awards makes me giggle. Who are they going to give them out to? SUV drivers? Polar bears?

Umbra on phosphates in detergents

Dear Umbra, Why haven’t phosphates been removed from dishwashing detergents like they have been from laundry detergents? I know they make your clothing look brighter, but what do they do for dishes? Natalie Waddell-Rutter North East, Pa. Dearest Natalie, Phosphates in dish detergent do a few nice things for dishwasher-washed dishes. Their biggest contribution is […]