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President cozies up to Saudi dictator, begging for lower oil prices.

Our overreliance on oil makes us do things that are economically stifling, ecologically destructive, and geopolitically self-defeating.

And then sometimes it just makes us look pathetic.

I refer, of course, to Bush's man date with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, during which he begged the repressive dictator to lower oil prices, something the repressive dictator couldn't do even if he wanted, which he doesn't particularly. All this took place, of course, on the holy ground of Bush's increasingly brush-free ranch in Crawford, where Bush and his repressive dictator buddy strolled, hand in hand, appearing for all the world like star-crossed lovers.

Matt Welch is grossed out, and so is Justin Logan, and so am I.

Via Matt Yglesias, who adds this:

[The price of oil] may go up or down a bit thanks to this or that gambit (Bush's Saudi ploy, the Democrats' hackneyed Strategic Petroleum Reserve proposal) but fundamentally it's something we need to start dealing with, rather than whining about. If cars were more fuel efficient, then high oil prices wouldn't be so bad, and over time prices might start to fall. If we stopped relying on oil for electricity generation, that, too, would improve the situation.

You could say that.

Guppy Love

Young urban professionals hip to green-building scene The trend now has a name. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Guppys: Green urban professionals who are young. (Yeah, we didn’t say it was a clever name.) Portland, Ore., has become the epicenter of a movement by the storied “creative class” to find, build, or remodel eco-friendly […]

What’s the Time? It’s Time to Get Iliamna

Proposed Alaskan mine may threaten salmon wonderland Near the shores of vast Lake Iliamna in southern Alaska, locals are worried that a huge proposed open-pit mine at the region’s headwaters could imperil legendary salmon runs. The story is familiar enough: an economically depressed, mineral-rich area gets courted by slick mining-company officials promising jobs and little-to-no […]

Iceland of Make-Believe

Fascinating facts about a country you could win a trip to You know, ever since we got into the business of shilling Iceland in order to promote our sweepstakes, we’ve learned an awful lot of fascinating stuff. And now we’ve moved past shilling — we just want to share! Guess how many people in Iceland […]

Next: Clay Aiken Draws a Line In the Sands of Tuvalu

Hollywood celebs travel to Arctic to raise global-warming awareness Matt Petersen of Global Green spends his time pondering this weighty question: “[I]n an age and culture that’s celebrity-obsessed, how do you in a smart and savvy way use the celebrity to shine the light on the science, on the facts, and on the solution?” When […]

Little-known facts from a country on the edge of your consciousness

293,966 — population of Iceland3 4,117,827 — population of Kentucky2 10 — percentage of Icelanders who believe elves “definitely” exist4 0 — number of successful elf surveys conducted in Kentucky 11.5 — percentage of Iceland that is covered by glaciers1 3,240 — square miles covered by the largest glacier, Vatnajökull1 2 — tectonic plates visible […]

China’s emerging energy policy

A pseudonymous guest author on Winds of Change looks at China's quest for oil, its tentative relationship with Russia, and the potential for friction between those powers and the United States.

Meanwhile, Jim, a retired engineer who writes on energy topics, has a good post about China's growing realization that it needs to broaden its approach beyond searching for imported oil.

Optimism

Joel Makower makes the case for optimism:

From my perch -- overlooking the landscape of business and how it is responding to the environmental challenges we face -- there is much good news to report. The world of commerce, still seen by many as the Earth's Evil Empire, is moving, slowly but ever so surely, toward a new environmental consciousness. Despite -- or perhaps in spite of -- the near abdication of energy and environmental leadership on the part of the White House, Congress, and most regulators -- the private sector increasingly is rising to the occasion.

Today's news that JP Morgan Chase bank will be issuing a new set of environmental policies seems to lend weight to Joel's sentiment.

Mainstream environmental groups don't seem to be getting anywhere in D.C. these days. Perhaps they should devote some of their billions to an aggressive cultural campaign, targeting the private sector and pop culture. That's where the individual battles are being won, and despite the paranoia of some progressives, if culture moves, eventually the political class will move with it.

To address global warming, we must harness rationality, good science, and enlightened globalization

Getting a bird’s eye view of the globe. Photo: Marcelo da Mota Silva. The commonplace view of the earth from an airplane at 35,000 feet — a vista that would have astounded Dickens or Darwin — can be instructive when we contemplate the fate of our earth. We see faintly, or imagine we can, the […]

Whether you recycle plastic really doesn’t matter.

I've been mulling over this "environmental confessions" business. I get that it's fun and light-hearted and I shouldn't take it too seriously. Horrible me, sometimes I don't recycle the kenaf-paper my peasant-collective-raised free-range hand-fed weekly-massaged organic beef comes in! Ha ha, I feel better.

But if there's one thing my two readers expect, it's dry, ponderous posts on subjects of soul-crushing weight, so who am I to deny them?

My thoughts on the matter are captured by this excellent comment from reader greenmark. Read the whole thing, but here's the main bit: