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Al Gore won’t run?

It sounds pretty final.

This will disappoint Frank Rich, who wants Gore to run as a spoiler:

Even so, let's hope Mr. Gore runs. He may not be able to pull off the Nixon-style comeback of some bloggers' fantasies, but by pounding away on his best issues, he could at the very least play the role of an Adlai Stevenson or Wendell Willkie, patriotically goading the national debate onto higher ground. "I think the war looms over everything," said Karl Rove this month in bemoaning his boss's poll numbers. It looms over the Democrats, too. But the party's leaders would rather let John Murtha take the heat on Iraq; they don't even have the guts to endorse tougher fuel economy standards in their "new" energy policy. While a Gore candidacy could not single-handedly save the Democrats from themselves any more than his movie can vanquish "X-Men" at the multiplex, it might at least force the party powers that be to start facing some inconvenient but necessary truths.

Can biodiversity adapt to a human-altered world?

Nope. And that picture isn't real. Only people can adapt to a rapidly changing environment, and even we have our limits. Everything else has to pretty much stick to the ecosystem it evolved in.

Global warming is a fact that we are going to live with for the next century or so, regardless of how successful we are at reducing CO2 emissions. Reducing emissions is just one thing that needs to be done. Finding ways to limit the damage caused by global warming must be done in parallel -- mitigation of the effects along with prevention of the effects. Debates over how funds should be spent will forever be a part of the environmental debate.

Americans and Climate Change: Incentives: Scientists

"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.

Today, we take a look at the kind of professional incentives that discourage academic scientists from communicating with the public more clearly and forcefully about global warming.

Let’s all buy a bicycle and break our leg

Words fail me:

Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, said gas wouldn't be so high today if ANWR was in production now. He scoffed at the notion that America should kick its fossil fuel habit.

"Let's everybody buy a bicycle," Young said. "Let's all buy a bicycle and break our leg, and let's go back to being China. And by the way, who's the largest consumer of automobiles today? It's China, not us, China. They also -- and some may take me to task -- they say (the Chinese) don't burn much fuel. They burn over 7 billion barrels of oil a year."

China, according the U.S. Energy Information Administration, burns 7 million barrels of oil a day, which comes to 2.6 billion barrels a year. China was the world's third largest automobile market last year, Businessweek reported in March, after the United States and Japan.

Can someone explain to me why Alaska keeps electing these people?

Pollan blogs on corn ethanol and local-food resources

Did you know that foodie writer Michael Pollan (look for my interview on Tuesday!) has a blog? Probably not, because it's hidden behind the cursed NYT Select subscription wall. Too bad -- it's a great blog, and deserves wider readership.

The latest entry reviews arguments against corn ethanol that will be familiar to readers of this blog, and concludes with this:

So why the stampede to make ethanol from corn? Because we have so much of it, and such a powerful lobby promoting its consumption. Ethanol is just the latest chapter in a long, sorry history of clever and profitable schemes to dispose of surplus corn: there was corn liquor in the 19th century; feedlot meat starting in the 1950's and, since 1980, high fructose corn syrup. We grow more than 10 billion bushels of corn a year in this country, far more than we can possibly eat -- though God knows we're doing our best, bingeing on corn-based fast food and high fructose corn syrup till we're fat and diabetic. We probably can't eat much more of the stuff without exploding, so the corn lobby is targeting the next unsuspecting beast that might help chomp through the surplus: your car.

In another entry, he pulls together a list of resources to help people find local, sustainable food. It deserves to be freed from the insidious NYT wall, so here it is:

Gore! Gore! You can’t make me stop!

Atrios says:

On Wednesday an inconvenient truth was the #11 movie in the country despite being in only 4 theaters, earning $78,994 ($19,749/theater). The #10 movie was showing at 1,265 theaters, earning 117,000, or $92/theater.

Paul Krugman says that substantially reducing greenhouse-gas emissions would do little more than shave a few fractions of a point off our GDP growth, and Matt Yglesias approves.

Krugman also says that Gore's re-emergence is a test of our character ($). "Are we -- by which I mean both the public and the press -- ready for political leaders who don't pander, who are willing to talk about complicated issues and call for responsible policies?"

Eric Boehlert says the national media, at least, is most definitely not ready, and seems geared up to pull the same crap on Gore they pulled on him in 2000.

MediaMatters fact checks Easterbrook's ass. That's gonna leave a mark.

Repopulating the Midwest

Brian Depew at The Rural Populist drew my attention to this story about TAB Funkenwerks, an audio-electronics outfit.

They needed a new home for their business. A 30K sq. ft. space in Seattle would have run them, oh, probably $3 million or so. Instead, they bought an abandoned school in Gaylord, Kansas.

Off Ebay.

For $25,000.

Dope

Environmentalists are all pot-smoking hippies, right? So I assume this news will be of some interest. Since Ezra stole my "martian" conceit, I'll just steal his whole post:

Salon on climate change

Salon has a mini-package of stories today on climate change.

The first thing that drew my eye was "Play Paul Revere," which promised "five simple ways individuals can fight global warming." I braced myself for the insipid boilerplate "change a light bulb!" chipperness. But to my immense surprise and gratification, three of the five have to do with engaging your community and your culture. Vote. Donate your time and money. And talk about it with people you know.

Official Gristmill Kudos to author Tracy Clark-Flory for keeping it real.

Also of interest, Katharine Mieszkowski takes a long, careful look at carbon offsets:

Military focuses on energy

Over at the DefenseTech blog, Noah Shachtman muses on the military's need to wean itself off oil, reacting to comments by Jim Woolsey (PDF).

Among other things, he flags the new issue of Defense Technology International (interesting website, though horrendous usability-wise), which is titled "The Military and the End of Oil." It's got pieces on hybrid diesel-electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells, solid-waste lasers (?!), and the DoD's new strategic approach to energy and conservation. Interesting stuff.

It's a little depressing to contemplate, but I suspect that 50 years from now we'll look back and realize that, as with so many previous technologies, it was military application that really accelerated clean tech deployment.

(ht: reader JH)

Update [2006-5-26 12:31:29 by David Roberts]: Ah, I see there's related news over on CleanTechBlog, mainly about the shift to hydrogen.