Oil imperialism is going to be the end of us

Via Political Animal, this little nugget got me thinking:

In other words, the bill to bring Army and Navy battalions back to the status they were in before the invasion ... [will be] $50 to $100 billion. "The next president will face a staggering bill," Wilkerson says, not even counting the costs of further efforts in Iraq.

So, not counting the cost of the war itself, just returning U.S. armed forces to the fighting condition they maintained back in ye olden dayes of Feb. 2003 will cost as much as $100 billion. The estimates for the total cost of the war have been pegged as high as $2 trillion.

We talk a great deal about the "externalities" of oil. It's important to remember that one of its costliest externalities -- probably No. 2 behind climate change -- is American military spending in the Persian Gulf, and at least two major wars.

If so, what?

Greg Anrig Jr.'s advice to Bush: Be more like Arnold.

Just one year after California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's political humiliation, with all four of his favored ballot initiatives crushed at the polls, the Terminator won reelection yesterday by 17 points. How did he accomplish such a dramatic turnaround? According to the Los Angeles Times, he 1) apologized for his missteps, which were attributable largely to rigidly adhering to right-wing ideology, 2) realized that his job was about "governing," 3) poured billions of dollars into popular programs, 4) cut bipartisan deals to fight global warming, boost the minimum wage, and reduce the cost of pharmaceutical drugs, and 5) made infrastructure the center of his legislative focus, underscoring his new brass-tacks approach to governance.

My advice to pigs: fly, little oinkers, fly!

Sea bass smuggler cops a plea in Miami

In September 2005, U.S. prosecutors brought criminal charges against Antonio Vidal Pego and the Uruguayan company Fadilur for trying to bring Chilean sea bass into Miami without proper documentation.

Although this case may have lacked the pizazz necessary to inspire a Law & Order episode, it was, in fact, a very big deal. This indictment was the first ever for the illegal importation and sale of Chilean sea bass. Yesterday was another groundbreaker, with the first ever guilty pleas for pirate fishing (coming from Vidal and Fadilur).

Listen and learn how the game is played

We’re constantly told that any slip of the tongue or exaggeration on climate science can destroy our credibility. If we...

‘Peiser refuted Oreskes’–In a poor piece of work that has been retracted by its author

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: Sure, Oreskes found no one bucking the consensus, but her paper was refuted by Benny Peiser, who did the exact same survey and found very different results.

Answer: True, Benny Peiser did attempt a similar study and submitted it as a letter to Science responding to the Oreskes study. But for very good reasons, it was not published.

Peiser claimed to find 34 articles in his "reject or doubt the consensus view" category. That's 3 percent of the total, so even taken at face value it doesn't cast much doubt on the consensus. But it is greater than the 0 percent Oreskes found, and serves as ammunition for the "there is no consensus" crowd.

Maverick chef Ann Cooper aims to spark a nationwide school-lunch revolution

Even the most intractable pathology can disappear, sometimes relatively quickly. A sign above a water fountain proclaiming “no coloreds” would...

The year, alphabetically

When it comes to global warming and the environment, everything seemed to change in 2006 -- at least in terms of public awareness. Here's an A-to-Z accounting of just some of those changes:

A is for An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's scientific but surprisingly human documentary on the threat of climate change, which was expected to take in at most $6-7 million at the box office but went on to gross over $45 million, the biggest documentary of the year and the third-largest of all time.

B is for biofuels, which went from becoming a hippies-only fringe product to a highlight of the State of the Union address. To date, Washington has been focused mostly on ethanol, but other fuels requiring much less fossil energy to produce are coming to the fore and proving surprisingly popular. Or as the bumper sticker says: "Biodiesel: No war required."

C is for California, which set a new standard for pollution control by passing a bipartisan package of bills designed to cut tailpipe greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 percent by 2016 (and many other measures). For this, Iain Murray, a fossil fuel-funded think tank writer for the far-right National Review, declared: "It is hard to escape the conclusion ... that what California has done is to decide to join the Third World."

A single-issue movement won’t cut it

David Roberts has been writing about environmental talking points. But I think that skips a step. We need to examine what kind of politics the talking points are intended to contribute to.

I don't think I have to persuade anyone reading this blog to forget about informed, competent insiders trying persuasion from the inside. Romm tried that with both government and business since the early '90s. Al Gore spent decades as a Senator and Vice President of the U.S. playing insider baseball on the issue. Amory Lovins has been pursuing the "appeal to rational business self-interest" strategy since 1976!

The only thing will make change is a bunch of ordinary people getting together and exercising their democratic rights as citizens. And it is not just us dirty hippies saying that. Non-hippie former VP Al Gore says:

A real live Canadian weighs in

If Capo di tutti Capi Roberts demands answers, who am I to refuse the call?

Below the fold, my thoughts on the choice of Stephane Dion for leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. The short version: modest optimism.