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Taking the wrinkles out of paper recycling

Recycling paper at your company? How’s it going? If you answered “yes” to the first question and “not so good” to the second, you’re in fine company. After years of trying, an astonishing number of outfits both large and small are having trouble accomplishing this seemingly simple task. At least, that’s my conclusion after talking […]

Not much

(Warning, numbers ahead. And I'm notoriously awful with numbers.)

This president has been known to ... mislead those who do not parse his words like Talmudic scholars. Here's what he said this evening:

So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative -- a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research at the Department of Energy ....

So what, pray tell, is the current budget for clean-energy research at the DOE?

I'm going to assume Bush was talking about the DOE's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy dept. Here are its budgets over the past few years:

• FY2003: $1,202,326,000

• FY2004: $1,235,478,000 (up 2.7%)

• FY2005: $1,248,582,000 (up 1.1%)

The FY2006 budget (PDF; view as HTML) says this:

SOTU prediction

Prediction:

Tonight, Bush will unveil a splashy energy program.

It will have one of his patented Orwellian names: The Energy Strength and Independence Small Farmer 9/11 Protect American Children Act, now with Extra Freedom^™!

It will have three parts:

• A big boost for campaign contributing Safe, Clean^© nuclear power, perhaps integrating and expanding on his recent reprocessing announcement (via Judith Lewis, check out the Union of Concerned Scientists press release on reprocessing);
• a big boost for hydrogen research (on that subject, see Technology Review);
• a big basket of subsidies for ethanol.

This will be packaged as an "alternative energy" proposal, along with a bushel of nationalism and xenophobia (foreign oil! foreign oil!), and will ultimately amount to little more than massive subsidies to friendly industries and constituencies.

Speech:

So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative -- a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research -- at the Department of Energy, to push for breakthroughs in two vital areas. To change how we power our homes and offices, we will invest more in zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy. (Applause.)

We must also change how we power our automobiles. We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars, and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen. We'll also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years. (Applause.)

Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. (Applause.)

Well, I could have done worse.

Six years to perfect a fuel blend?

John F. Kennedy, 1961:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

George W. Bush, 2006:

We will also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips, stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years.

SOTU

ThinkProgress has the full text of the State of the Union speech here. More on that later.

‘Eco-terrorism’: A radio discussion

Your Call Radio hosted a discussion on "eco-terrorism" involving John Sellars of the Ruckus Society, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Judith Lewis of L.A. Weekly.

It's really, really good -- an uncommonly hysteria-free discussion of the subject. You can listen to it here.

The SPLC, which has tracked far-right extremist groups for a long time, recently starting tracking "eco-terror" groups (some material here and here). Mark Potok makes no excuses for their behavior, but he makes it very clear that they are nowhere near the "top domestic threat." And Lewis makes some fantastic points, many of which I have made myself in my obsessive blogging on the subject, and provides some interesting historical context.

Recommended.

(via Judith herself!)

More on SOTU

This post from ThinkProgress is so good I'm just going to rip the whole thing off:

Some predictions

I can't say I'm expecting much of substance from Bush's speech tonight. Is anybody?

I am, however, expecting some soaring rhetoric and empty promises. Let's talk about those.

One issue that Republicans very much want to control is energy independence, which is looming larger and larger in the public mind. They need to preemptively frame it to their advantage. With that in mind -- and a few oblique hints from the interview -- I'm hazarding a prediction: Tonight, Bush will unveil a splashy energy program.

It will have one of his patented Orwellian names: The Energy Strength and Independence Small Farmer 9/11 Protect American Children Act, now with Extra Freedom^™!

It will have three parts:

For five years a ferry was dumping sewage directly into Long Island Sound, and no one noticed?

It's not every day that someone in America goes to jail for an environmental crime. But yesterday, Mark Easter, the operations manager of the Fishers Island (N.Y.) Ferry District got hit with 30 days, for dumping raw sewage into Long Island Sound and the Thames River, in New London, Connecticut. And the federal magistrate in Hartford who is overseeing the case hit him with a $10,000 fine for good measure.

It's hard for me to say whether the punishment fits the crime here. But I have a feeling that someone is being let off the hook, politically if not legally -- and I'm not saying it's Mark Easter.

The joke makes itself

Two Fox News employees have filed a lawsuit claiming they were sickened by air contaminated with toxic molds and pesticides while working in the building where "The O'Reilly Factor" and "At Large with Geraldo Rivera" are produced.

...

DeRosairo, a control booth graphics technician, and Clarke, a makeup artist, said they were made ill while working within the broadcasting complex that produces shows that also include "Hannity and Colmes" and "Dayside."