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Make ’em spend it all

The money is lining up against Prop 87 in California.

Prop 87 is a ballot initiative that would impose a small fee on oil drilling in the state. The fee is indexed to the price of oil, making it essentially a tax on oil company profits. Those wells that went in when oil was $25 a barrel? They still cost the same to run. If they were profitable then, they are goldmines now.

Over 10 years, Prop 87 will raise $4 billion. The money will go toward kicking our oil addiction.

<pSounds good. And it is good.

He’s everywhere!

Good interview with Joel Makower over on Treehugger. It's nice to hear someone explicitly involved with green business say this:

What's the biggest eco-myth out there?

That we can shop our way to environmental health.

An environmental toll to war

Today's New York Times details a $64 million U.N. pledge to help clean up "the worst environmenal disaster in Lebanese history," a huge 87-mile Mediterranean oil slick off the Lebanese and Syrian coast.

UNEP has a useful environmental impact page including photos and maps delineating the slick and damaged coastline. In recent years UNEP has gone in after conflicts to do environmental assessments. Reports on Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Liberia, Palestinian Territories, etc. are online and detail the additional costs of war.

Hirsch on responding to peak oil

For peak oil geeks, the Hirsch Report is a document of near-Biblical significance. It was written by Robert Hirsch at the behest of the Department of Energy, and published in 2005. (You can read a summary here [PDF].)

It's disappointing, then, to hear what Hirsch personally recommends as a response to peak oil. Over at Transition Culture, Rob Hopkins reports on a talk by Hirsch at the (ongoing) International Peak Oil and Gas Conference in Pisa, Italy:

After the Garden

On Neil Young's fairly great Living With War Today site, check out the release of his new video, based on the song "After the Garden."

To me the song sounds like a raucous thirty-years-later revisioning of the enviro classic "Back to the Garden," by Young's old friend Joni Mitchell, but Neil says the song was inspired by An Inconvenient Truth.

Also on the site is the video of the very first run through from this year's raging "The Restless Consumer," the toughest, angriest song Young has recorded in years -- with the loudest guitar to prove it.

Ooh, Kinky

Faithful Grist List readers know that Kinky Friedman is running for governor of Texas. Wacky but true. And listen to this (sub):

Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman (I) released his energy plan yesterday, calling for the state to increase its renewable portfolio standard to 20 percent of its electricity usage by 2020.

"We have the resources to be self-sufficient. We have enormous solar, wind and biofuel capabilities. What we lack is leadership," Friedman said.

He also wants to create a Texas Dept. of Energy -- not a "traditional agency," he says, but a "bully pulpit" headed by, no shit, Willie Nelson.

Awesome.

Your random thoughts could help a hungry econ student

Here at Grist, we get a lot of requests for help with problems that, frankly, we're not smart enough or equipped enough to handle. So when a request comes along that we can actually do something about, it makes us happy.

Kimberly Garvie, a graduate student in economics at the University of Wyoming, asked us to spread the word about a survey on invasive species she's doing for her thesis. Take the survey! Help her out! (Number-phobes, beware: it's heavy on the econ, light on the invasives.)

For details, you can emailE=('kgarvie@' + 'uwyo.edu') document.write('' + 'contact' + '') her directly.

From Kinky to Kicky

Kinky is as Kinky does Texas guber-candidate Kinky Friedman is trading his Caddy for a biodiesel ride and wants Willie in his cabinet. Plus he’s got his own action figure and a rockin’ ‘stache. Almost makes us want to pack up for the Lone Star State. Almost. Photo: Brian Kanof MyCage.com It’s hard out here […]

More on canvassing

A while back, we ran a story by Nathan Wyeth about the crappiness of progressive canvassing operations. It prompted a long and lively discussion on the blog.

For those interested in the topic, check out Greg Bloom's new story in In These Times. It's about how canvassing operations burn young workers out, fight their attempts to unionize, and generally serve as a sweatshop for the creation of donor rolls. Bloom also blogs at MyDD, and his latest post is a follow-up to the article.

Fighting solutions

First, see the op-ed by a fellow at the hyper-libertarian Atlas Economic Research Foundation: "Global warming foes fight global warming cures."

Second, see Dave's talking point.

Repeat as necessary.

(via deSmog)