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Just plane frustrating

In a typical year, my family's biggest source of CO2 emissions is -- by quite a wide margin -- air travel. We use less gasoline than a typical American family, but we more than make up for it by traveling long distances to visit our family, scattered around the east and west coasts.

A few years back, I started strategizing about how to reduce our air travel. And I settled on a two-step plan.

• Step one: convince my sister to move from San Jose, CA to Seattle -- which would not only mean that we could see much more of each other, but also save our families at least 8 round trips per year (4 for her family, 4 for mine).
• Step two: give up traveling to see our east coast family for a year, and vacation close to home -- saving at least one cross-country round trip flight for our family of 4.

So this year, we put both steps into action. My sister and her family will be moving into our neighborhood (yay!) and we decided to go car camping rather than traveling to the east coast. We'll be flying a lot less as a result.

But as things have turned out, I'm not sure our plans have saved a single drop of fuel.

Auto X-Prize

The same folks that put up $10 million for the first private vehicle to enter suborbital space are at it again, this time for something less pie-in-the-sky: a prize for a super-efficient, low-emission vehicle.

Let's hope they are just as successful this time.

Check out the details, in development, here.

Picking the right horse

Michael G. Richard goes through the relevant chapter of Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers and pulls out a series of points and arguments that add up to this: carbon sequestration is unlikely to play a major role in our fight against global warming. (I basically agree -- see this post.) Give it a read.

I have just one quibble. Richard says:

As a society civilization species, we must back the right horse and stop being misled by the coal industry's delaying tactics. There's a big opportunity cost in time and resources to going down the wrong path.

I would question the notion that we need to "pick the right horse."

AEI and AR/4

Climate scientist Andrew Dessler has started a blog (join ... usss ...).

Today he brings word that the American Enterprise Institute -- a right-wing think tank famous for housing warmongers -- is offering $10,000 (PDF) to anyone who can write a cogent critique of the coming Fourth Assessment Report from the IPCC (or as everyone cool calls it, AR/4).

Dessler seems to think that the amount of the award and the recipients of the offer indicate a seriousness of purpose on AEI's part, but ... color me skeptical. The IPCC is going to be a huge media event. Everyone will be talking about it, at least for a week or two. 'Wingers will need something they can point to and say, "oh, look, that's been refuted." They won't particularly know or care whether the alleged refutation is valid. They just need it to exist. They just need a URL. That's what AEI appears to be purchasing with their $10K.

But we'll see.

Where does your gas come from?

Chicago Tribune reporter Paul Salopek spent the last year on "an energy safari," working backwards from the customers and night-shift clerks at a single Marathon gas station in exurban Chicago (and the downstate refinery that supplies it) to the exact fields where the oil first left the ground. Last September, for instance, 71% of its gas came from the U.S., 20% from Africa, and 10% from Saudi Arabia.

The eight stories and related multimedia (photos from Iraq, Louisiana, Nigeria, and Venezuela, and a 12-part video documentary) neatly tie together the disparate lives on both ends of the petroleum pipe: an angry gang recruit in Itak Abasi, Nigeria, an oilfield manager in Basra living under what amounts to solitary confinement, fiercely Chavista village elders in Venezuela, the gas station manager who spends a third of her pay on gas, and a "concerned" Hummer-driving realtor in St. Charles, Illinois. The Tribune calls our "globe-spanning energy network" "so fragile, so beholden to hostile powers and so clearly unsustainable, that our car-centered lifestyle seems more at risk than ever" -- a bit out of character for a Republican newspaper with a suburban circulation base.

Checklist liberalism

It's slightly off topic for this blog, but what with all the environmentalist exhortations to "form coalitions" and whatnot, I thought it would be a public service to link to Mark Schmitt's typically wise words on the subject of "checklist liberalism."

Does this Shahtoosh shawl make my butt look big?

Ever wonder why warthog fur coats never caught on? Infinitesimal progress is being made to control the illegal wildlife trade (outpaced only by the illegal drug and weapon trades). According to this article in the Independent, 250 "shahtoosh" shawls and four tons of ivory were intercepted just this summer. Some elements in Japan are starting to irritate me no end. In addition to undermining whaling bans and paying $50K for a tuna, they now want to resume the ivory trade.

The role of government in environmental protection

There is an ongoing debate about the appropriate role of government for solving environmental problems, with many environmentalists calling for increased government intervention and many people more predisposed to individual responsibility calling for less.

Jim Moriarty, president of Surfrider Foundation, answers questions

Jim Moriarty. What work do you do? I work at an environmental, action-sports-oriented nonprofit called Surfrider Foundation. What does your organization do? We exist for the protection and enjoyment of oceans, waves, and beaches. Two examples: we fight for clean water and beach access. How do you get to work? Mini Cooper S or telecommute. […]

Partisanship

This is why I worry about global warming becoming a partisan issue: