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New E.U. environmental standards are changing the global marketplace

Europeans are a wee bit funny when it comes to incubation. During the Middle Ages, they obsessed about the threat from incubi, evil spirits rumored to descend upon women and have their way with them as they slept. Then (in the condensed version of history) came the New Economy, and incubating was all the rage, […]

Blaming enviros for New Orleans is a clever government strategy

Do Senate Republicans really think they can shift the blame for the flooding and deaths in New Orleans to environmentalists? Maybe that's not the question we need to ask ourselves.

This smear effort could become a significant distraction for eco-advocates -- at a time when a focus on implementing good wetlands policies in the Gulf is crucial, and as Republicans try to weaken environmental protections and implement bad energy policies as part of rebuilding efforts.

Groups ranging from Louisiana's Save Our Wetlands to American Rivers to the Sierra Club have issued angry rebuttals to the charges that environmental lawsuits helped destroy New Orleans. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have also issued statements castigating the effort.

The scrap heap is history?

Check it out: by 2015, all cars sold in Europe must be 95 percent recyclable. Apparently, Mercedes-Benz already has a 2007-model year car that meets the requirement.

Part of me wonders if automotive engineers aren't actually excited by this sort of challenge. It seems that whenever a new idea like this comes along, the auto executives complain about how impossible and costly it will be -- but as soon as the industry's hands are forced, the engineers figure out how to pull it off faster and cheaper than the executives had claimed was possible. It happened with catalytic converters, with seat belts, with air bags. And now, if early signs are any guide, it's happening with recycling.

Will transit ridership increase as gas prices continue to spike?

As big-time blogger Duncan Black noted over the weekend, high gasoline prices seem to have boosted ridership on some of the the nation's transit systems -- which led big-time blogger Matthew Yglesias to speculate that gas consumption may be more sensitive to price than economists have predicted.

Yglesias' take seems mistaken to me. Nationwide, less than 5 percent of all commuting trips are taken on transit; and commutes represent a minority of all trips that people make, but a fairly large share of all transit trips taken. So even if transit ridership were boosted by, say, 20 percent -- which is a huge spike indeed -- that might represent a decrease in vehicle trips of, oh, a half a percent or so at most.

In fact, it seems to me that any recent increases in transit ridership are pretty much in line with what economists would predict from recent gas price increases. (See here, especially table 8, for a summary of economic predictions for the relationship between fuel prices and demand.) Of course, that doesn't necessarily undermine Yglesias' main point, which is that higher gas taxes would decrease fuel consumption.

Bush hopes to send Americans to the moon … again

So, many enviros are familiar with The New Apollo Project, based on Prez Kennedy's original Apollo moon missions but instead aiming to harness that good ol' 'Merican ingenuity and know-how to jumpstart a massive clean-energy program in the U.S. while simultaneously creating a whole slew of new jobs. Good idea? Sure it is. But like most good ideas in the U.S., it's going exactly nowhere in the halls of government.

But now, sensing the public's urgent, even palpable need for space travel (oh, it's there!), the ever with-it Bush admin has a plan that takes the new Apollo Project in an entirely different direction: to the moon. That's right, they've got a plan to go retro and couple that fabled American ingenuity with high-tech spending to boldly go where, uh ... we've already been. But hey, the moon worked for Kennedy, right, so why couldn't it be a rallying point more than 40 years later? (We're in the middle of a curiously similar war, after all, and maybe that's all the reason anyone needs.) Of course, some might be quick to mock the administration, saying they're just trying to divert attention away from other issues. But what could they possibly want to distract attention away from? I really have no idea.

Seriously though, this is great. Given the massive budget trauma in the wake of Katrina and, um, the enormously expensive and still ongoing occupation of Iraq (donation, please?), and, uh, that stuff in Afghanistan, and all those tax breaks (am I missing anything?) -- amid the shifting of funds away from NASA and the likely cut of about 600 NASA employees from their Washington headquarters, nevermind the fact that the agency still can't clear the stratosphere without its shuttle falling apart -- I think a big ol' Space Odyssey 2005 is exactly what this country needs. Or at least a big ol' press conference about it.

Ooh, the moon!

Lava One Another

Jay Tutchton, head of environmental law clinic, answers questions

Jay Tutchton. What work do you do? I am the director of the Environmental Law Clinical Partnership at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law. We introduce law students to the world of public-interest environmental litigation and train them in the basic skills of the trade, and we file the best lawsuits we can […]

Synthetic monkeys to replace real ones

It looks like wild orangutans are going to be extinct in my lifetime. * A pessimist would view this as a disaster, but as an optimist, I see only opportunity here. Not only do I plan to buy stock in Indonesian palm oil companies, but also I am thinking of marketing weather-resistant synthetic replicas of orangutans (see prototype above) to hang in the palm oil trees. I expect to garner a secondary income stream from tourists who will flock to the plantations to see them hanging in trees in an area that once harbored their natural habitat -- a theme park if you will. Covering all bases, I will also corner the market on bumper stickers that read, "Boycott products made from palm oil!" **

The only hope I see is that the Chinese, who are funding these new palm oil plantations, will step in and insist on some kind of conservation plan, putting our version of capitalism to shame. What are the odds that a senior member of China's ruling elite is reading this blog right now?

*Start of sarcasm.
**End of sarcasm.

Off by a Mileage

EPA to revise tests of new cars’ gas mileage The U.S. EPA has announced plans to overhaul its current method for estimating the fuel economy of new automobiles — the miles-per-gallon numbers stuck on the windows of every new car. The method now in use has changed little since the mid-1970s, even though driving conditions […]

Plight My Fire

Spain reprimands public for careless behavior leading to forest fires Spain has endured about 23,000 forest fires this year, up more than 25 percent from the same time last year. The blazes have destroyed more than 370,000 acres of land and killed 17 citizens — and more than 90 percent of them have been started […]