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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.

South Central Community Farm update

If you haven't been keeping up: The situation at the South Central Community Farm has gotten even more grim. The farmers have received an eviction order. A variety of celebs and quasi-celebs and hippie ex-celebs have taken up direct action, camping out on the farm. Julia Butterfly Hill is even sitting up in a tree. It's not looking good.

Go give them some money.

(Meanwhile, the same city that can't cough up $10 million for this community farm is contemplating spending $800 million renovating a sports stadium to attract an NFL team. Awesome.)

Americans and Climate Change: Incentives

"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.

All right, I realize that nobody is reading this, but dammit, I started posting it and I'm going to finish. It's a shame, really -- this is one of the most interesting chapters. It looks at a variety of professions -- scientists, journalists, educators, politicians, businessfolk, and environmentalists -- and examines the kind of career incentives that discourage active engagement on climate change. It's quite eye-opening. Today I'll just post the intro (super-short!).

From Dems to Diva

It’s just a jump to the left Welcome to Grist List’s time-warp edition! This week, Al Gore and both Clintons made noise about global warming and energy policy. For a sec we thought we’d been transported to 1996, but then we realized: a decade ago, they weren’t saying a damn thing. Photo: AP/Denis Paquin. And […]

A new reliance on coal could sap green cred from the ethanol industry

As ethanol boosterism spreads far and wide — from Bush’s bully pulpit to the New York Times to green-group press releases — a quietly emerging trend is threatening to undermine the biofuel’s environmental credibility. editorial page How green is this ethanol plant? Photo: iStockphoto. More and more ethanol manufacturers are looking to power their plants […]