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A public service announcement

Today is my birthday, so feel free to use this thread to tell me just how empty your life was until you met me and/or encountered Gristmill.

It means less than you might think

Chevron's discovery of massive new oil deposits beneath the Gulf of Mexico has prompted a predictable flood of stupidity from the media. The theory of peak oil is being called into question. Our need to get off of oil is being called into question. The quality of our national dialogue is being called into question.

For one-stop shopping on what the new oil find means -- and doesn't mean -- see this definitive post over on Oil Drum.

Some tasty debunking

I was pleased and surprised to see that Consumer Reports devoted the cover story of its recent issue to a lengthy report debunking the alleged benefits of E85. This is part of a welcome new focus on green issues by the magazine.

Enviros should adopt some animal welfare concerns

Many environmentalists strongly advocate sticking with a platform that focuses exclusively on the large global challenges of biodiversity preservation and natural-resource sustainability, and stays clear of animal welfare. They correctly point out that environmentalism has traditionally concerned itself not with the treatment of individual animals, but with protecting whole populations. At a time when we face mass species extinctions, it is certainly a risky strategy to contemplate the expansion of environmentalism into a realm fraught with both ideological and political difficulties.

But I believe this is what environmentalism should do.

CEO of nation’s largest auto dealer gets behind the latter

"Who Killed the Electric Car?" conspiracies aside, why do I think plug-in hybrids will make it where strict plug-ins didn't?

Because, at a gut level, I think more people would buy them. Americans are congenital dreamers. No matter that most trips are under 25 miles. If the car purchase in question does not let you indulge in the fantasy that one day you might just take that road-trip to Jazzfest, wheels hissing on the wet moon-lit roads through the bayou, air heavy with frangipangi and Spanish moss; or a surfari to Baja, camping in the dunes and eating nothing but the fish you spear -- well, what's the point?

An electric car with a 200-mile range may get your groceries, but at the cost of cherished self-image. Practicality and reality have never been much of a driving force in purchasing decisions.

Just my opinion, which doesn't matter much in the scheme of things. But here's an opinion that matters a bit more: check out this op-ed from from the CEO of AutoNation, the nation's largest car dealer:

In Da Strauss

Levi Strauss will debut organic-cotton jeans Good old-fashioned Levi’s jeans will become new-fashioned in November, when the company debuts Eco jeans. The denim dungarees will be organic cotton, naturally dyed, and U.S.-made — and, like all too many eco-products, woefully expensive, with a hefty $250 price tag (printed on recycled paper with soy ink). Spent […]

We’ve Got a Helsinki’n Feeling

Asia-Europe Meeting provides lots of talk, little action A club of 38 European and Asian leaders concluded a two-day summit in Helsinki, Finland, yesterday, saying what they always say and failing to make the concrete plans they always fail to make. The leaders agreed to continue to cut greenhouse gases after the Kyoto Protocol expires […]

Go and Cinema More

New climate-change documentary focuses on people of faith If An Inconvenient Truth didn’t exactly bring evangelicals to the multiplex in droves, The Great Warming just may. Religious leaders hope the documentary, to be screened in September and distributed in October along with voter guides and eco-sermons, will mobilize religious groups around climate change — just […]

Come On, Baby, Do the Loco Oceans

Rising ocean temperatures caused by anthropogenic warming, says study Well here’s a shocker: turns out it’s global warming causing the globe’s oceans to warm, a phenomenon linked to more intense hurricanes. Such is the counter-counter-intuitive conclusion of new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Over the 20th century, average sea-surface temperatures […]

An interview

An interesting interview with James Lovelock, though his defense of nuclear power is maddeningly sketchy. I'd like to see the original transcript.