David Pimentel has been on my reading list for a while. Amazingly for a book that seems to be influencing a whole line of public argument, this book hasn’t gotten that prominent of a publication venue.
Tyler Cowen, as usual, has some interesting objections to the energy cost approach.
From Brad DeLong:
Democrats are (because of the environmentalist wing of the party) generally in favor of higher gasoline taxes and higher gasoline prices–except when gasoline prices are high). Republicans are in favor of letting oil markets “work”–except when gasoline prices are high.
Meanwhile, I’m wondering if it’s just coincidence that CBS4 has started to have a […]
It probably won’t be news to anyone following the issue already, but I thought the NewsHour’s piece on the proposed Cape Cod wind farm was a good one.
Francine looks at rising gas prices and wonders what it will take to get people to commute by bicycle. She suggests better facilities for cycling commuters and improvements to the bicycles themselves. To which I’d add that there really needs to be some bike routes into major office areas. Downtown’s the trickiest, but until you […]
I thought I’d recommend a post that Oil Drum author Ianqui had guest posted at Ezra Klein’s blog. In it, the author covers the main energy requirements of modern agriculture. Some of these I’ve heard before and some, like transportation fuel, are obvious. But I wasn’t aware of the amount of energy used for fertilizer […]
James Wolcott points to a Rolling Stone article on the upcoming “long emergency” that our depletion of oil will mean. The piece is by James Howard Kunstler, of Geography of Nowhere fame, and it’s worth a read even if I think it raises more questions than its overly assured tone answers. I find it impressive […]
Since traditional print news media are superior to bloggers in the nuts-and-bolts reporting where phones have to be picked up and leads followed, and since I don’t have much shoeleather or rollover minutes to spare, I thought I’d propose a great story idea to some enterprising investigative reporter: track what actually happens to the materials […]
From an excellent NewsHour piece on rising oil prices last night I heard John Kerry say the following:
I’ll tell you what. If the gas prices keep rising at rate they’re going now, Dick Cheney and George Bush are going to have to carpool to work.
….Number one, we should be putting pressure on OPEC to […]
Brad DeLong has often criticized the press’s coverage of economics as Dems-say-GOP-says without actually bothering to see which numbers add up. But this fear of math is not limited to economics reporting. In a spot-on post, Gregg Easterbrook takes journalists and politicians alike to task for confusing nominal and real prices of gasoline in their […]
The Herald reports (from a press release no doubt) that the Sierra Club is planning to launch a three-month campaign to bring about a North-South Station rail link. (See the Club’s site). An uninterrupted train ride through the city would be nice, but from an environmental point of view, I can’t think of anything more […]
Joe Klein has a great piece in Time outlining what’s wrong with the Democrats right now and what they need to do. The latter is particularly appreciated, as everyone seems to offer their criticisms, but little imaginative as a solution. Here’s Klein’s:
They will have to convince the public that they are as committed to national […]
Commonwealth magazine (free registration required) has a profile on Doug Foy, chief of Commonwealth Development. I have to say I’ve been impressed by Foy, by his policies and his interviews in print and on Greater Boston. And I’m impressed with Romney for trailblazing the new cabinet position, choosing someone as aggressive in his environmentalism as […]
Dan Kennedy’s post today brought to my attention a commentary piece in the Globe’s business section by Steve Bailey, calling for the end to the bottle deposit. The piece is spot on: the bottle deposit is, today at least, less about good environmental policy than surreptitious revenue for the state. This is clearer nowhere than […]
NYT’s Nicholas Kristof gives the common liberal assessment of hyrogen-fuel-cell cars: that they are the solution to our energy dependency. Unfortunately, the picture is more complicated. Two recent pieces (in the Economist and the New Republic) point out the major problem with the plan: that energy is required to create hydrogen feul. At best the […]
Everyone seems up in arms about the SUV-causes-terrorism ads. (See today’s Globe or Bob Zellnick’s rant during last Friday’s Greater Boston). Granted, the ads do draw with a large brushstroke, but the apologies for SUVs that have come in their wake are nauseating. I refuse to believe that roads are safer since SUV popularity has […]