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Look at this remarkable graphic from the weather page on USA Today:

Sunday linkfest

Time to clear out the backlog!

CNN has a whole package of stories and interactive info widgets under the banner "Fueling America." Great work -- really valuable.

The U.S. State Department has a series of electronic journals called Economic Perspectives. The latest edition is called Clean Energy Solutions, and if you're looking for the official gov't line on energy, it's a good snapshot. On the upside, see Amory Lovins' piece on how to build hyper-efficient cars. On the less upside, James A. Lake shills for the nuke industry.

Judith Lewis has a sharp piece in the L.A. Weekly on the DIY electric-car crowd.

In The Nation, Mark Hertsgaard discusses the G8's plan to spread nuclear across the globe, driven by newly enthusiastic support from, of all places, the U.K. Here's the punchline: The Brits claim they won't subsidize nukes. They'll just let the industry blossom like a lotus in the desert. Back here on Planet Clue, there's no nuclear industry without subsidies -- never has been, never will be. So they're either lying about wanting nukes or lying about the subsidies. One guess.

McDonough presents

Treehugger is right: This video of William McDonough (below the fold) is unbelievably good. Of course, I'm a confirmed McDonough fanboy, so what would you expect me to say? Still, if you can talk your friends into watching this, do.

Julieclipse, R.I.P.

Gristmill reader Julieclipse wrote what follows, intending to post it on this thread. She died in a automobile accident before she had the chance. Thanks to her boyfriend for sharing it with us.

Rest in peace, Julia. Your hope and humanity are an inspiration.

Progressive realism

Check out Robert Wilson's essay on "progressive realism" in the Sunday NYT.

The basic idea is that ...

... the national interest can be served by constraints on America's behavior when they constrain other nations as well. This logic covers the spectrum of international governance, from global warming (we'll cut carbon dioxide emissions if you will) to war (we'll refrain from it if you will).

And it is based on a fundamental change in international relations:

[T]echnology has been making the world's nations more interdependent — or, as game theorists put it, more non-zero-sum. That is, America's fortunes are growing more closely correlated with the fortunes of people far away; fewer games have simple win-lose outcomes, and more have either win-win or lose-lose outcomes.

This principle lies at the heart of progressive realism. A correlation of fortunes — being in the same boat with other nations in matters of economics, environment, security — is what makes international governance serve national interest. It is also what makes enlightened self-interest de facto humanitarian.

Word.

Jacobs does Gore

You have to wade through a painful Flash site to see them, and go to San Francisco to buy them, but hipster designer Marc Jacobs has a line of Al Gore t-shirts, tote bags, and trucker hats (click on "special items"). Apparently they're all the rage this season.

Are there Gristmill readers in San Francisco? Email me.

(via The Notion)

Brown gets down

Discovery News tells us that a biofuel crisis is looming. Lester Brown is concerned that two billion (about a third of the way across this window) desperately poor people may soon find their food in our gas tanks:

Global warming: The spectator sport

A chunk of rock twice the size of the Empire State Building will soon fall from the Eiger, one of Switzerland's most famous peaks. Tourists from around Switzerland are flocking to the site, near the diminishing Grindenwald Glacier. Geologists blame global warming, because as the ice melts, water gets into existing cracks and opens them wider.

Hertsgaard on the environmental movement

Mark Hertsgaard's cover story in The Nation this week is a long look at the current fortunes and reconfigurations of the environmental movement: "Green Goes Grassroots."

To eco-geeks like yours truly, it's a familiar story: the movement realizes it's gotten top-heavy and D.C.-centric, too reliant on wonky techno-language, too depressing, and too insular. So it is:

• pouring more money and resources into supporting local organizing;
• trying to speak in simple language;
• focusing on solutions and can-do spirit; and
• creating alliances with a variety of other interest groups.

I've heard all this before. My worry has been that it is, in a phrase made famous by hapless terrorist wannabes loudly arrested by the Bushies in the run-up to the mid-terms, "more aspirational than operational." Hertsgaard's piece does marshal some solid examples, but not quite enough to make a convincing case there's a real, broad, sustained change taking place. I hope there is.

The piece touches briefly on a subject that's extremely important and too-little-discussed inside the movement (for obvious reasons): the role of foundations. This captures the problem well:

Sustainable and vegetarian cuisine is on show in Sin City

Quick: Where can you eat vegan doughnuts for breakfast, vegetarian Chinese for lunch, and 13-bean soup for an afternoon snack? Hint: In the same city, you can feast on sustainable fish for dinner, prepared by one of the country’s celebrity chefs, and Kind Apple Cobbler for dessert — the “raw” version. New York? Maybe. Seattle? […]