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Our Life With the Drill Kill Kult

House bill would end U.S. offshore drilling bans Legislation being drafted in the House Resources Committee would end 23-year-old bans on new offshore oil and gas drilling in the U.S. Still not formally introduced, the legislation, dubbed the State Enhanced Authority for Coastal and Offshore Resources Act, would expand state control over offshore drilling and […]

Handle With CAIR

EPA issues air pollution rules for Eastern states With the Clear Skies bill dead in committee, the Bush administration is going ahead with its plan to implement provisions of the bill as regulation. Yesterday saw the first step, as the U.S. EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), which will substantially curtail emissions of […]

Arctic Refuge update

Yesterday we wrote about attempts by Senate Republicans to backdoor their way into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by slipping a provision into a budget bill. Today brings news that Senate Dems have failed in their attempt to slip it back out.

Love is one word for it

While waiting in line at the P.O. yesterday, I found myself gazing at an ad that I've come to hate. Have you seen it? It's for eBay, and shows the inside of a cardboard carton with a few spare Styrofoam peanuts rattling around. The text reads something like "Eight gallons of packing material around a pair of shoes is a kind of love."

Actually, eight gallons of packing material around a pair of shoes -- shoes! -- is ridiculous, and wasteful, and stoopid. I'm writing a letter.

The family that spies together …

Hey, did everyone watch Alias Wednesday night? Not a fan? First let me get you up to speed ...

Sydney Bristow (played by Jennifer Garner) is a covert CIA agent. She works with her father Jack Bristow, who happened to marry an undercover Russian spy (Syd's mom). She also works with her boyfriend Michael Vaughn (Syd's mother supposedly killed his father). Michael's best friend Eric Weiss is also on the team. Eric works with his burgeoning love interest, Nadia. Get this, Nadia is ... Sydney's half sister (they have the same mother). Wait, it gets better ... Nadia's father is everyone's new boss, Arvin Sloane, who, up until not too long ago, was considered to be an enemy of the United States. Oh yeah, Sloane (among other things) also had Sydney's fiance killed, as well as the wife of another team member, Marcus Dixon. He obviously had an affair with Syd's mom / Jack's wife.

Can you see why I'm addicted to the show?

So what do these super spies do when they get together for a dinner party? No, everyone does not gang up on Sloane -- he's a good guy now after all! And they don't fight over whose disguise is better or boast over who has the bigger gun or who uses the cooler gadgets. They talk about: hybrid cars. Yup, that's right. On the March 9th episode of Alias, during the scene when the team gets together at Sloane's house to celebrate Nadia's birthday, they all have a chat about hybrid cars and the global oil economy. And apparently, Sydney drives (or has driven) a hybrid!

A little Europhilia

I keep meaning to link to Jay Walljasper's E Magazine piece on hometown pride, European style. There's not a lot new there for people who follow urban planning and such, but it's both a nice travelogue and a heartfelt argument for making cities more livable. Through a series of examples, he illustrates one basic point: The fact that European cities are more livable, walkable, and generally enjoyable than big American cities is not some fluke of history or geography. It's the result of conscious community planning, and it could be done here.

My honeymoon took me through London, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Paris. I wish every U.S. citizen could take that same trip -- it's hard to imagine just what a livable city looks and feels like until you've been in one. Riding a bike around Amsterdam, in particular, is something everyone should do before they die. It's amazing to see a whole system of transit where cars are marginalized, just one relatively small and dismissively treated segment. Men in suits, fashionably attired women in heels, parents with babies -- everybody rides a bike. It's just phenomenal.

How about where you live? What's being done to make it more livable? What do you wish was being done?

I’ve got my eye on Yue

As longtime readers know, we here at Grist are fascinated/horrified/baffled/whatevered by the environmental implications of China's explosive economic growth. On that score, two reading recommendations.

First, Lester Brown at the Earth Policy Institute writes that China simply can't develop the same way the U.S. did. Not a moral can't, but a brute physical can't -- there just aren't enough resources. On oil, coal, steel, and paper, the story is the same: If China consumed at U.S. per capita levels, it would consume more than the world currently produces. That takes a while to sink in, but it's pretty incredible to contemplate. If, when China's median wage reaches U.S. levels (projected to happen between 2030-2040), China's per capita consumption of oil also reaches U.S. levels, China alone will be consuming more oil than the entire world produces today. With oil, that's probably just not possible -- oil production has either already peaked or will soon. With something like paper, it might be physically possible, but it would be ugly indeed. No more forests. Same with meat, or cars, or whatever. It's just brute math.

And this is just putting it in terms of raw resources. If China actually travels down that road, they'll hit an environmental wall before the resources themselves run out.

The good news is, apparently some folks in China realize this. Or at least one folk. Read this Spiegel interview with Pan Yue, Deputy Director of China's State Environmental Protection Agency. It is, as Jamais notes, remarkably candid for an official of any country, but particularly China. Yue makes no bones about the fact that something has got to change in China's development, and he's not afraid to go to bat against powerful people in business and government to make it happen. He's also startlingly frank about the fact that political reform is necessary to prevent eco-catastrophe. Seriously, it's pretty short, so just go read it. But here's one tasty excerpt:

This [economic] miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace. Acid rain is falling on one third of the Chinese territory, half of the water in our seven largest rivers is completely useless, while one fourth of our citizens does not have access to clean drinking water. One third of the urban population is breathing polluted air, and less than 20 percent of the trash in cities is treated and processed in an environmentally sustainable manner. Finally, five of the ten most polluted cities worldwide are in China.

As Jamais also says, it's worth tracking Yue's political fortunes. If he is successful in government, it's a good sign. If not, well ...

Finally, please see this disclaimer.

Disclaimer for all future China posts

When we write about China's massive growth and the apocalyptic environmental consequences thereof, we are:

1. not saying that China should refrain from developing, or that the Chinese should stay poor;
2. not excusing the extravagant per capita level of consumption and waste in the U.S.

Instead, we are advocating that China move quickly and decisively to develop sustainable technologies, industries, and sources of power, and that the U.S. green movement support China in that quest however it can.

Thanks for listening.

Joevangelism

Evangelical leaders rally to fight global warming Following its adoption of an environmental platform in October, the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group of 51 denominations, has scheduled two meetings in the Washington, D.C., area to focus on global warming. To be attended by influential religious leaders, scientists, politicians, and members of international aid […]

The Idiotarod

Republicans are after the Arctic Refuge again Undeterred by consistent public opposition and bipartisan objections, a number of Republicans are once again attempting to get oil drillers into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Senate Budget Committee Chair Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) slipped ANWR into a budget resolution yesterday, which unlike standard legislation cannot be defeated by […]