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The best idea George Bush never had

Today the feds unveiled a new conservation campaign, complete with energy hog cartoon mascot. Although the New York Times reported this as a shift in energy policy, it seems more like a ... pause.

We came across this transcript of a telephone call between President Bush and Energy Secretary Sam Bodman (who told the Times that "new supplies were still essential but that they were a long-term solution").

Bush: Sam, hey. It's George.

Bodman: Hi George.

Bush: Great. Listen, I been thinking, we need some kinda mascot around this whole energy thing. Some kinda ... bear or something. That mascot thing worked real well when I was at the Rangers. People love to hug. They'd love to hug a bear. They would.

Bodman: A mascot, sir?

Ride the white crony

Speaking of TIME, and of more pressing short-term threats to our environmental health: Check out "How Many More Mike Browns Are Out There?" It is, as you might suspect from the title, an investigation into how many other important government agencies are now headed by Bush administration cronies with no qualifications and no principles aside from their loyalty to Bush.

Scary, scary stuff. And it doesn't even touch on the EPA and FWS and other eco-related agencies, which as we all know are led by and increasingly (as long-timers leave in disgust) staffed with ex-industry lobbyists.

This kind of rot and incompetence at the core of our government is one of those dire threats that environmentalists pay insufficient heed to, what with it not being "environmental." Heed should be paid.

(Anybody get that title reference?)

Hurricanes and global warming, part 548,389

I'm sure everybody's sick of reading about it by now, but if not, TIME has a cover story on whether global warming is responsible for the recent hurricane damage.

After going on and on about how mixed and controversial and ambiguous the science is, it concludes:

In Washington successive administrations have ignored greenhouse warnings, piling up environmental debt the way we have been piling up fiscal debt. The problem is, when it comes to the atmosphere, there's no such thing as creative accounting. If we don't bring our climate ledgers back into balance, the climate will surely do it for us.

This is certainly a valid perspective, but it seems basically unconnected to what came before it. Global warming may do many bad things over the long haul, but raising average hurricane wind speeds from 100mph to 105mph doesn't really seem like one that's well-suited for the kind of rabble-rousing everyone is trying to use it for.

McMansions on the wane?

This NYT article on the alleged leveling off of new home sizes is a rather mild ray of hope given where we need to get, but it's worth reading. I found this bit particularly amusing:

In less populous areas, builders of large houses are derided for despoiling the natural environment. Arthur Spiegel, who is retired from the import-export business, is building a 10,000-square-foot house in Lake Placid, N.Y., in the Adirondacks. The hilltop house has brought protests from the Residents' Committee to Protect the Adirondacks, and construction has been halted by local building authorities.

Mr. Spiegel said that the house "is only 6,500 square feet, unless you count the basement," and that it's the right size for his extended family to gather in for ski vacations.

A strategy of fear

Good essay by Ira Chernus over on TomDispatch. It's about fear, and the recent attempts by anti-Bush forces to use the fear frame -- "he's not keeping us safe" -- to topple the administration. It's an effective short-term tactic, he says, but perhaps a bad long-term strategy.

We'll never be safe if we make safety our ultimate goal. We'll be safe only if we let safety be a by-product of a society working together to improve life for everyone.

The best way to be secure is to imagine a genuine politics of hope. Imagine. Unfortunately, when John Lennon said, "It's easy if you try," he was quite wrong. After six decades of our national insecurity state, it's incredibly hard. But it's an effort that anti-Bush forces ought to make. The alternative is, however inadvertently, to reinforce the politics of fear that Bush and his kind thrive on. The belief that danger is everywhere -- that we must have leaders whose great task is to keep us safe -- is the one great danger we really do need to protect ourselves against.

The implications for how greens approach global warming are, I trust, obvious.

How to put the brakes on employee driving

Even before last month’s Gulf Coast catastrophes sent the nation’s oil companies scurrying to hike gas prices, the cost of driving to work was nearing the pain point. And not just the price of filling up: as average commute times have grown over the past five years, even in green-minded cities like Portland, Ore., and […]

Porcine of the Times

Bush administration launches cartoon conservation campaign With gas prices already skyrocketing and home heating costs expected to follow, the Bush administration yesterday unveiled a long-term clean-energy and conservation program. Oh, wait, did we say “long-term clean-energy and conservation program”? What we meant was “cartoon character.” Yes, yesterday the Department of Energy (working with consumer group […]

We’ll Always Have Parish

Louisiana faces massive trash and toxics cleanups New Orleans’ ecological recovery is likely to be both complex and lengthy. State environmental officials say Hurricane Katrina left around 22 million tons of debris in southeast Louisiana, 12 million of it in Orleans Parish. The ginormous load of trash ranges from organics like downed trees and rotting […]

The Drill of the Chase

Offshore and Arctic Refuge drilling out of House bill — for now House Republican efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and U.S. coastal waters to oil drilling are dead for now, but are likely to return, zombie-like, from the grave. Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) had offered legislation, intended as part of a larger […]

David Helvarg sends a dispatch from the hurricane-ravaged South

David Helvarg is president of the Blue Frontier Campaign, which originally published this article. He is also author of the forthcoming, revised Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America’s Ocean Wilderness (Sierra Club, 2006) and 50 Simple Ways to Save the Ocean (Inner Ocean, 2006). Thursday, 29 Sep 2005 NEW ORLEANS, La. The smell of New Orleans […]