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Tonight's editor: patrickz
All views expressed by today's editor do not necessarily represent those of eKos or eKos listed diarists.
In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including: better health, animal rights, food safety, global food crisis, frugal living and the immense contribution of meat production to climate change/depletion of resources.
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:
100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
70 million gallons of gas -- enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
Having seen the huge clusterfuck that is the Athabasca oil sands in Alberta, the magic underpants-wearing wingnuts of Utah have become inspired.
Me too! they say.
There is a hearing tomorrow in Salt Lake City to discuss what would be the 1st proposed tar sands project ever in United States. Sure, Utah had a major oil spill not 2 months ago. But that was then, this is now.
This time the moose will pull a rabbit out of the hat, I'm just sure of it.
Or maybe not.
Even the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which is eying the "tar sands" of Utah for commercial development, acknowledges their development would "completely displace all other uses of the land."
To time has come to gather around and take a well deserved hiatus from all the politics of the day. Science talk is here. New discoveries, new takes on old knowledge, and other bits of news are all available for the perusing in today's information world. Over the fold are selections from the past week from a few of the many excellent science news sites around the world. Today's tidbits include cool roofs can mitigate global warming, vaccine patch with dissolving needles, the most massive star ever discovered, seeking better biofuels by examining leaf structure, Born's rule in quantum physics confirmed, climate change causes larger and more plentiful marmots, and diabetes monitoring device benefits man and dog. Pull up a chair. There is plenty of room for everyone. Get comfy and settle in for one more session of Dr. Possum's science education and entertainment.
U.S. Geothermal built the first modern geothermal power plant in Idaho and has never really recovered from the gold-digging by Goldman-Sachs. Goldman has gained international acclaim for its financing methods so you might have missed the hurt it laid on a geothermal power start-up.
The juice racketeers in the old days got a call when nobody else would lend. Their no-neck collectors had methods for collecting the juice that beat the heck out of lawyers and courts, not to mention borrowers.
Goldman and cohorts have somewhat more refined methods today but no less effective for those trying to develop the most potent of all renewable energy resources. Even Al Gore recognizes that simple fact though few of his idolizers seem to.
Why is Ram Power, a geothermal power company, headquartered in Reno and incorporated in Canada? Why does US Geothermal Power, incorporated in the U.S., still raise money in Canada? Why is the premiere geothermal company in the U.S., Ormat, an Israeli company?
Bob Potter is why.
The climate/energy bill is dead this year. Senator John Kerry thinks that the Senate might get around to passing a huge, highly controversial lame duck bill in the middle of a campaign season. He may be alone in that delusion; the rest of us need to face reality. Reality is that the road to a comprehensive, halfway decent climate/energy bill will not, in all likelihood, not be traversed any time soon.
Excellent post-mortems can be found by David Roberts (there's no silver lining in this cloud), Paul Krugman (Who cooked the planet?), and Tom Friedman ("we're gonna be sorry"), among others. Rather than rue the road not taken, here's a few thoughts on the roads ahead.
The many workers and administrators who make our public transportation systems work as well as they do for so much of the time deserve our praise and support. Held back by tight and shrinking budgets, frequently placed in poor and dangerous working conditions, and forced by the nature of their business to work with aged and faulty systems at the same time that those systems are heavily used, these good people are asked to do the impossible and to take the heat when expectations are not met. This certainly goes for the nation’s second-busiest system, in Washington, DC where I live. But:
Despite all the green washing out there (and there is lots of it, lets be clear), corn-based ethanol is far from a panacea in terms of reducing America's dependence on imported oil, dependency on fossil fuels, reducing greenhouse gases and representing a good investment for the taxpayer. While supporting corn ethanol is, it seems, great politics to get through the Iowa primary, independent study after independent study shows that it is not a good deal for the taxpayer, the economy, and the environment. The absolute 'best' case, from honest analysis, is that this is a very costly and inefficient path for very marginal reductions in fossil-foolish dependencies and minimal greenhouse-gas emission reductions. Other analysts come out with the conclusion that we actually lose ground in GHG emissions in returns for the $billions being pumped into corn ethanol.
Right now, we seem to be watching (in slow motion?) a headlong rush into another "ethanol"-like boondoggle driven, in no small part, by the $70 million or so that T Boone Pickens has put behind promotion of The Pickens' Plan.
This is the second in a continuing series by the NRDC Action Fund on the environmental stances of candidates in key races around the country. Today, we examine Pennsylvania's 8th Congressional district -- Bucks County, Montgomery County, and northeast Philadelphia. Currently, the 8th CD is represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by Patrick J. Murphy (D). Murphy is being challenged by Republican Mike Fitzpatrick.
Please rec the new Mothership #63 here. This one has expired.
The current ROV DIARY: Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #243 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - ursokelvar
Rules of the Road
PLEASE visit Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier's diaries to find out how you can help the Gulf now and in the future. We don't have to be idle! And thanks to Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier for working on this!
Some time back in the 1990s there was a poor to middle class neighborhood off of Sherman boulevard, not too far from the hospital. Peppered with large trees and scrubby oaks, it was more or less on the outskirts of town, but a very old neighborhood of the Muskegon Area...
And then one day Walmart and Lowes made the decision to locate in the area.
They picked that very spot, that very neighborhood to locate their store on. Not near. On. And so they bought up most of the houses in the neighborhood, and for the people who opted not to sell, Muskegon Township condemned their homes and kicked them out with a pittance for their trouble.
People living in the poor neighborhood in Muskegon, MI, USA were intimidated and kicked out of their homes, which were then bulldozed and a new Walmart and Lowes was built on it.
And this, my good reader, is where we come to the subject of wind turbines 6 miles away in Lake Michigan.