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Gays destroy New Orleans

Saying that global warming "caused" Hurricane Katrina is pretty stupid.

No, clearly what caused Katrina is God's anger at homosexuals. Thanks a lot, gays!

(via Think Progress)

Umbra on offsetting emissions from flatulence

Dear Umbra, I was wondering if there is any information about the average CO2 emissions from human flatulence. My friend (and I really do mean my friend, I’m not just trying to hide that it’s for me) has a birthday coming up, and I think it would be a fun and meaningful gift to get […]

CAFE standards and gas taxes are not the only choices

My own take on CAFE standards is roughly Kevin Drum's: There's no need to think of CAFE standards and gas taxes as an either/or choice. And you can probably get more done with both than with either alone.

In fact, there's reason to believe that gas taxes wouldn't raise efficiency as effectively as CAFE standards. Consumers typically undervalue the benefits of fuel efficiency -- they only take a few years worth of gas savings into account when buying a car, even if they plan on holding onto the car for much longer. That's not necessarily rational, but it's apparently human (or at least American) nature. And it means that fuel taxes probably would need to be really steep to get the same result as CAFE standards.

Now, as long as we're dreaming about conservation policy, there are two ideas that get much less attention than either gas taxes or CAFE standards, but that could be far more effective than either.

CAFE standards reduce fuel use, but increase the total amount of miles driven

A point of clarification about CAFE standards, apropos of Dave's post below.

According to this report (careful, it's a pdf) from the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, increasing CAFE standards would, in fact, save fuel (contrary to the claims of this this moronic article). The problem is that more fuel-efficient cars are also cheaper to drive. And that would mean that CAFE standards, even as they save fuel, would also slightly increase the number of miles people drive.

Now, driving obviously has all sorts of "externalities" -- costs that are borne by someone other than the driver. Some of the externalities are related to fuel consumption and the resultant air emissions; CAFE standards do help reduce those problems. But extra driving also means more car crashes, more congestion, more noise pollution, more risks for walkers and bikers, higher rates of obesity, lower rates of physical activity, more expenses for road building and maintenance, and so on.

So in simple terms, all the bad stuff that comes along with extra driving would overwhelm the good stuff that comes from consuming less fuel. Yes, we'd import a bit less oil, but we'd get in more crashes, build more roads, sprawl a little more, etc. And the human and environmental costs of all those other things (according to the VTPI report, at least) outweigh the good that's done by raising CAFE standards.

I don't think that's reason not to have CAFE standards. But it is reason to be very careful about what other policies you have in place that would help soften those unintended consequences.

How McIntyre got famous

One of the very few front-page stories The Wall Street Journal has ever run on global warming was about the work of an obscure semi-retired businessman named Stephen McIntyre. Said work criticized the infamous climate-change "hockey stick." The story catapulted McIntyre -- who was and is regarded as a bit of a kook among actual climate scientists -- to fame, and he's since been lauded by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tx) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla).

Inquiring minds want to know: WTF?

Paul Thacker has the back story.

Update [2005-10-11 14:59:40 by David Roberts]: Antonio Regalado from the WSJ wrote to inform me that the above is inaccurate -- the WSJ has in fact printed several page one stories on climate change (his unscientific survey turned up 14). Consider me chastened and corrected.

On green building, urban development, and reviving rural America

This is part two of a three-part interview. You can read part one here and part three here.

In this section, Alex and I discuss green building, urban development, and reviving rural America.

Recent magazines catalogue the planet’s grim tidings

I just spent a few days at the fair helping out with 4H activities. This gave me time to catch up on my periodicals.

Resources for news and opinion on the hurricane

Hurricane Katrina has unleashed almost incomprehensible destruction on the Gulf Coast, particularly New Orleans. Some resources:

• The New York Times has a brutally frank story on the unwisdom of building human settlements on the Gulf Coast at all.

  As long as people could control floods, they could do business. But, as people learned too late, the landscape of South Louisiana depends on floods: it is made of loose Mississippi River silt, and the ground subsides as this silt consolidates. Only regular floods of muddy water can replenish the sediment and keep the landscape above water. But flood control projects channel the river's nourishing sediment to the end of the birdfoot delta and out into the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico.
  
  Although early travelers realized the irrationality of building a port on shifting mud in an area regularly ravaged by storms and disease, the opportunities to make money overrode all objections.

• The NYT also has an editorial on the same subject, and USA Today also has a story on it.
• The Washington Post has the latest on the flooding and the refugee crisis (odd to think of refugees in the U.S., isn't it?) -- pay particular attention to the story on how the rerouting of the Mississippi, along with rising sea levels from global warming, has led to a dramatic shrinking of the coastal wetlands that once sheltered Louisiana.
• The WaPo also has a fairly stunning set of photos of the hurricane's aftermath.
• An AP wire story calls attention to a possible environmental crisis, namely that the storm may turn New Orleans into "a vast cesspool tainted with toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins released by floodwaters from the city's legendary cemeteries."
• A Reuters story says that the EPA has relaxed green-fuel regulations in areas hit by the storm.
• Los Angeles Times has a story on how Katrina has turned attention back to global warming and a good chart showing the oil pipelines, platforms, and refineries in Katrina's path.
• The NYT has a piece casting doubt on the theory that global warming has caused more intense storms.
• TIME has a piece supporting the theory.
• Speaking of global warming, Ross Gelbspan has a completely over-the-top editorial in the Boston Globe calling global warming the "cause" of just about everything but herpes.
• Democracy Now! has a great show on whether global warming is raising storm intensity, with New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and hot-stuff meteorologist Kerry Emanuel.
• The Environmental Economics blog has a roundup of links on the subject of Katrina and gas prices.
• Worldchanging has an interesting post on foresight in the new climate age we've entered.
• California Yankee has a fairly comprehensive list of organizations to which you can contribute to help the victims.
• Of course, despite the pretensions of this post, your real one-stop-shopping destination for news about Katrina is Wikipedia, which never ceases to amaze.

Feel free to leave other significant links in comments.

Update [2005-8-31 11:0:47 by Dave Roberts]: Oh, and perhaps the most important story of all: The disaster is so bad that President Bush has cut short his vacation by two days. Inspiring.

Update [2005-8-31 12:43:35 by Dave Roberts]: Oh, and I forgot to mention perhaps the best hub of coverage of all: New Orleans' own Times-Picayune, which also had this tragically prescient series on NO's vulnerability to a big storm.

Oregon joins Washington and California with emissions limits

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski just tipped over the last clean car domino on the West Coast: He's directed his Department of Ecology to draft regulations for adopting California's clean-car standards.

This is a major step. Washington State had opted for California's standards, provided that Oregon adopted them too. Because Canada has adopted similar standards, Oregon's move has created a clean-car corridor stretching from San Diego through northern British Columbia. Together, between California, Canada, and the northwest and northeastern states that have followed their lead, about 40 percent of the North American new-car market will soon be cleaner and, if all goes well, more fuel efficient to boot. (There's a pretty good chronology of all the political action on the car standards here, if you scroll down through the posts.)

Ho Chi … Man, I Gotta Pee

Vermont rest stop combines advanced green toilets with Vietnam memorial Like chocolate and peanut butter, it’s a combination so natural you wonder why nobody thought of it earlier: Vermont has built a $6.3 million rest stop featuring an ecologically advanced flush-toilet system, a greenhouse, and … the country’s oldest Vietnam memorial. Located along Interstate 89, […]