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‘What are we supposed to do, walk?’

Thanks to Kit Stolz for pointing me to an Onion item I missed:

"Public Outraged As Price Of Fast-Depleting, Non-Renewable Resource Skyrockets"

Eco-friendly building materials: The new black

The New York Times discovers that the market for green building supplies (flooring, paint, etc.) is booming. As usual with puffy trend pieces like this, there is frustratingly little actual information, just a series of mini-profiles. One thing the piece does make clear is that this market is still the province of wealthy suburbanites. But, you know, the promise of economies of scale, blah blah ...

2006 predictions

Stuart Staniford over at Oil Drum offers some predictions for 2006 that are worth reading. I think he really lost his nerve here, though:

Civilization Collapse, Rapture, Alien invasion, etc.

I estimate the probability of any of these events in 2006 as being negligibly small.

Aw, c'mon!

More willing to predict The End, as always, is the indefatigable Jim Kunstler, who thinks 2006 ...

Which words defined 2005?

Check out Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year for 2005 -- the words most often looked up online. Can this be real?

1. integrity
   
2. refugee
   
3. contempt
   
4. filibuster
   
5. insipid
   
6. tsunami
   
7. pandemic
   
8. conclave
   
9. levee
   
10. inept

Yup, that pretty much sums it up.

Going to Sundance?

Formerly known as EV Confidential, Who Killed the Electric Car?, currently in post-production, will be playing during the 2006 Sundance Film Festival (Jan. 19 - 29, Park City, Utah).

A synopsis:

Fashioned like a tongue-in-cheek murder mystery, Who Killed the Electric Car? sets out to uncover just who is responsible for the demise of this ill-fated vehicle. The spirited film runs through the prime suspects, including car companies, oil companies, the government, and consumers. Beginning in the early nineties, under pressure from the California Air Resource Board, car manufacturers were forced to develop nonpolluting vehicles. GM made the first car, the EV-1, available for lease in the midnineties. After less than 10 years, citing lack of interest by the public, the automaker took the vehicle off the market and officially discontinued the project. Government policy was rescinded, and currently, GM and other automakers are crushing all remaining electric vehicles. Filmmaker Chris Paine follows electric car activists who are desperately trying to save the few remaining cars from being destroyed and hoping to change policy. A very timely subject, Who Killed the Electric Car? serves as a potent reminder that the powers that be will stop at nothing to maintain their position in the world. The film is an informative and thoroughly entertaining journey into the world of environmentally conscious technology and the cars that may one day be here...again. -- Lisa Viola

I'd say "see ya there," but, alas, I'm not going.

Look, honey! It’s a disaster!

New bus tours of Katrina's aftermath: creepy or clever?

One thing's for sure: they're popular.

And other thoughts from a ‘clueless’ enviro.

As political junkies know, Grover Norquist -- a major player in the Republican establishment -- holds weekly breakfast meetings, attended by everybody-who's-anybody on the right. This is where much of the famed "message coordination" happens. It would take a brave Democrat to venture into that lion's den.

I guess Al Gore is brave (stupid? foolhardy? running for president?).

He attended last week's meeting to give a version of his basic PowerPoint presentation on global warming. According to Steve Hayward's account (via Ezra), Gore was charming and the presentation was impressive, but the Q&A session failed to dazzle.

What bugs me about Hayward's post is this:

The real environmental debate

The stereotypical environmental debate is between people who favor "command and control" regulation (big government) and those who favor market mechanisms (small government). Democrats and most environmentalists are thought to be on one side, Republicans and "free market" environmentalists on the other.

This is a woefully imprecise and outdated way of describing the current political landscape. It's a large and complex topic, too much to chew over in one blog post. But Kevin Drum, writing on an unrelated subject, nails perhaps the most salient fact:

One of the underreported stories of the past few years is the evolution of the Republican Party from being the party of capitalism and free enterprise to being merely the party of whichever business interests can help Republicans get reelected. There's a big difference between being pro-market and being pro-business -- in fact, they're often diametrically opposed ....

Polar bears

As if it wasn't enough that the huge reduction in the polar ice cap has caused polar bears to drown at an alarming rate, now tourists can pay to shoot them in Greenland.

Binky, polar bear of tourist chewing fame at the Anchorage Zoo, was just getting in his last licks while he still could ...

Umbra on hyped-up verbiage

Dear Umbra, Surely you must have noticed that ubiquitous cliché of environmental reportage: the alarming rate. Forests are disappearing at an alarming rate, coral reefs are being destroyed at an alarming rate, global warming is increasing at an a.r., and so forth. Clearly, the use of “alarming rate” is itself growing at an alarming rate. […]