Environmentalists may be backpedalling away from certain websites, but not from biofuels technology, which has advanced so rapidly that the world is falling over itself to harness its powerful potential. Like atomic energy, it must be used wisely, with restraint and foresight to avoid disruption of the environment. And the escalation of a premature corn [...]

This Lelo in NoPo blog entry tells a sad tale –OPB is bringing Ira Glass of “This American Life” to Portland for a fundraiser, but can’t be bothered to look hard enough to find a venue that isn’t in a homophobic right-wing church (whose membership, on the whole, likely thinks OPB is part of the [...]

OK, pretty much every environmentalist is backpeddling away from ethanol at great speed.  The new meme is “OK, ethanol does suck, but biodiesel’s still groovy!”
No, actually it’s not.

Wind Power
Oregon’s energy news is limited but interesting. We are experiencing exponential growth in wind power generation – a doubling of capacity will occur when current projects are completed, and a great deal more is being proposed. In that regard we have an interesting legal battle brewing just west of The Dalles. A wind farm [...]

This past week, the local grassroots “Bus Project” organization held another in a series of debates about issues relevant to our community.  The topic du jour happened to be the impact of gentrification on the city of Portland.  Use of the term, gentrification, is itself contentious, having evolved to absorb hints of racism mixed into [...]

A very smart engineer in Seattle wrote this brilliant piece for Gristmill, an enviro blog, using his handle “Biodiversivist.”
I got nothing to add — except to wish that the Governor, every Oregon legislator, and every last person in Portland city government had to read this piece and actually justify what they’re doing when they promote [...]

I just posted this at Sen. Wyden’s blog and thought I should cross post here because this is something that every Oregonian of any political leaning should be able to get behind: the idea that the presidential power does not extend to elevating someone beyond the reach of the law.
I think the moment for impeachment [...]

Robert Liberty, that is. The idea that we need a third auto crossing for the Columbia River is insane.  Nice that someone in power has beamed on to the fact that our “planning” process is typically just the facade we hang over decisions we already made.

The Australian documentary “Crude” was an impressive effort. I wanted to verify the claims presented in the documentary. For that reason I visited the Science Library at the U. of of O., found the QH 344 shelf (Library of Congress system, common to university libraries) which contains material relating to the ‘Carbon Cycle’. There are, [...]

What are we to do with the litter-on-a-stick folks, the ones who promote themselves by saying that their “medium” is one that cannot be avoided, ignored, or otherwise turned off — that “medium” being, of course, the billboards that are helping make the point (as if anything was needed to make this point) that corporations [...]