Latest Articles

Be very afraid

An unusually forthright commentary from Lee Dye on ABC:

But how much will it change? How will that affect us? And how soon?

Those are the tough questions, and some of the answers will remain elusive for years to come. After all, predicting climate, even day to day, is foggy at best. Given the variables, it may be the most difficult science of all.

But many experts confide privately what they aren't yet ready to announce publicly: Change is accelerating at a dramatic rate.

Talking Points

Climate and energy have entered mainstream dialog. They're being discussed on op-ed pages and cable news, by ordinary people around the water cooler (do they still have those?), outside of environmental and policy-wonk circles. Hell, Rory's grandparents bought her a Prius on Gilmore Girls. Or so I hear.

This is all to the good: these are extraordinarily important issues, and every concerned citizen should be at least minimally educated about them.

Problem is, there are lots of folks out there with a vested interest in confusing people and derailing these discussions. They are armed with misleading factoids and bogus rhetorical tricks, and seek to kick up enough dust to convince the public that it's all just too complex and they should leave it up to politicians -- politicians bought by the very vested interests in question. There are massive misinformation campaigns afoot, and your average Joe or Jane is outgunned.

So, I'm starting a series of posts called Talking Points. The idea is to provide short bits of ammunition for y'all to take out into the public square. I want to collect arguments or ideas or notions or turns of phrase that might be useful when talking to people about climate- and energy-related matters. I'll try to avoid wonkiness and scientific jargon.

And of course I'd love it if you left your own talking points in comments, or emailed them to me.

Stay tuned.

Clean Automotive Technology funding

It's over a week old, but it's still worth reading Michael Stebbins' piece in Seed about the cool things coming out of the EPA's Clean Automotive Technology program -- including the nifty "hydraulic hybrid" UPS truck -- and Congress' short-sighted refusal to fund it adequately:

... between 2002 and 2006, the President's annual budget requests and Congress had tag-teamed the Clean Automotive Technology program, slashing its budget in half to $10 million per year for the 35 engineers working to reinvent the engine. In his budget request for 2007 -- released just after his State of the Union address, in which he announced his Advanced Energy Initiative to decrease our oil imports from the Middle East as much as 75% by 2025 -- the President asked Congress to cut the budget for the program to a paltry $3.6 million.

Jerks.

Not to get all grassy knoll, but …

From the I-don't-want-to-get-all-grassy-knoll-on-y'all-I'm-just-sayin' department, I offer two items buried in the business page of today's New York Times:

* On page C3, we learn that Ken Lay isn't the only businessman involved in the Enron mess who came to an untimely end. Here is the NYT:

A British banker who provided evidence to the F.B.I. and the United States Department of Justice about Enron-related transactions has been found dead in an East London park, days ahead of the politically charged extradition of his former colleagues to Houston to stand trial.

Scotland Yard, the Times goes on, "said the death was being treated as 'unexplained' and that officers from its homicide and serious crime units were investigating."

Brilliant

A friend who inexplicably still reads Wired religiously pointed me to this interview with Larry Brilliant, who was recently put in charge of Google.org, the philanthropic foundation set up by the Google guys.

Brilliant's quite a guy -- check out the whole thing -- but naturally this jumped out at me:

What's your mandate?
We'll have three big areas: climate crisis, global public heath, and global poverty, not necessarily in that order. I'm going to approach this the way a venture capitalist would -- map out the industry to see what the gaps are. You fund an initiative, learn what works, and ask, "Will it scale?"

To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint.

Sweet:

‘Eco-terrorism’: Arson v. satire

There's a lot of good stuff in Pat Morrison's op-ed on the overuse of the word "terrorism." Like this:

From the White House to the soccer pitch, "terrorist" has "cooties" and "your mother wears combat boots" flat beat as the top playground potty-mouth slur for the 21st century.

Who's surprised? The Bush administration has been scattering the word like ticker tape on a Manhattan parade. Old McDonald left the farm for the NSA, and now it's here a terrorist, there a terrorist, everywhere a terrorist.

I couldn't agree more about the politically driven cheapening of the word. But he also makes a good point about environmental activism:

Osama bin Laden has said that he fears mockery more than death. If eco-protesters want to do some real damage, they should give up arson and take up ridicule. Don't torch those SUVs; put a cardboard cutout of Bin Laden in the passenger seat of an H2, and one of Dubya in the driver's seat beside him, then alert the media.

Hm ... sounds like something I've heard before ...

(Some other good stuff on eco-terrorism from Renee Downing and Randy Serraglio.)

Newt and energy

Newt Gingrich is likely going to run for president in 2008. I hope and pray he wins the Republican nomination, as his defeat in the general would be all but a certainty, but it strikes me as unlikely.

Anyway, he describes his proposed energy policy on this page, and it includes a rather baffling misunderstanding that seems common in conservative circles:

The Bush administration's investment in developing hydrogen energy resources may be the biggest breakthrough of the next half-century. Hydrogen has the potential to provide energy that has no environmental downside. In one stroke a hydrogen economy would eliminate both air pollution and global warming concerns. Since hydrogen is abundant in the air and water around us, it eliminates both the national security and foreign exchange problems associated with petroleum.

Uh.

Offshore oil

The usual suspects in Congress are pushing hard for legislation that would end the ban on U.S. offshore drilling. It's the latest cause célèbre of the Fossil Fuels Forever crowd.

Over on Oil Drum, Dave (no relation) takes a long, close look at the claims made by proponents about available oil reserves. It's somewhat technical, as usual for OD, so if you want to skip to the end, here's the nut:

In conclusion, here in the United States we continue to fiddle as Rome burns.

Sigh.

Alternet for Gore

Alternet readers have voted Al Gore their favored presidential candidate. Between this and the Daily Kos poll, it looks like Gore has the coveted Online Lefty vote locked up, should he choose to enter the race.