I’m struck by how often biofuels proponents resort to arguing that they are all but entitled to subsidies because of all the subsidies that we give to the fossil energy welfare kings.
This hardly seems wise.
First, it’s juvenile. You like to think that, in a democracy, we’re capable of, oh, you know, learning from past [...]

The earliest years I have any memory of were in Dallas, Texas, where I lived until age 10. According to the old saying, that makes me a Texan forever … though I have pretty much totally recovered I think. But with the uber-reactionary Dallas Morning News coming to its senses on the death [...]

My journey is complete. I’ve been to Atlanta by way of Edmonton ( Seemed like a good idea at the time. How was it? Doggone good idea. Great trip. Great train. Substantially superior to Amtrak). Every inch of the journey by rail. As you will know if you’ve read my previous offerings I am a [...]

The estimable George Monbiot (author of “Heat,” a plan for a response to climate change that actually addresses the scale of the problem) publishes this excellent summary of the problem when calling for a five-year moratorium on biofuels.
I’m willing to stop short of that, if we can agree that we should only subsidize the NET [...]

From the Oregon Conservation Network’s excellent weekly e-letter “Salem Watch”:
Expanding Oregon’s Electronic Recycling Program
The report from the Legislative Revenue Office came back on HB 2626 [E-waste recycling program] and as expected there is no revenue impact for Oregon’s taxpayers for the creation of a statewide electronic recycling program. This will [...]

Note that HB2626 gets us started on all three of these recommendations for getting our leaky “bottles” (computers) full of hazardous materials out of our waste stream.
=================================
High-Tech Trash Talk
Excerpts:
When we heard about Elizabeth Grossman’s “High Tech Trash” book, we did seek a meeting with her in downtown San Francisco to ask her a few questions.

Lenny of Onward Oregon has piece on the bottle bill expansion over at Blue Oregon that has prompted some good comments:
http://www.blueoregon.com/2007/04/bottle_bill_sym.html#comments
The most insightful point made is that the incentives for the grocers are to make the system bad enough that people just discard their empties rather than deal with the hassle of one-at-a-time-painfully-slow-while-you-stand-in-the-rain machines that [...]

What would we do if traffic engineers and urban planners operated under a law that said that their spouses/partners and their children had to use bikes in their cities and towns at least half the time?
What if we cared about encouraging non-polluting, healthful transit that doesn’t require an Army to obtain the fuel?
One answer to [...]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/toles_main.html?name=Toles&date=04112007

Story below reports that California may join Oregon among the civilized states that permit aid-in-dying to terminally ill people.
This would be huge step forward for America if so. Aid-in-dying — incorrectly named “physician assisted suicide” — is a huge boon to Oregonians, most of whom never take the pills prescribed under the law; they [...]