Hhaing The Yu, 29, in rain falling on the ruins of his home, in a township outside Yangon, Myanmar.

This is not about politics; it is about saving people’s lives. There is absolutely no more time to lose.

— United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, pressing the military junta in Myanmar to accept international assistance as hundreds of thousands of its citizens reel from the effects of a devastating cyclone earlier this month; May 14.
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Energy efficiency is tricky. You might think that increasing energy efficiency would be a no-brainer, since it usually pays for itself, improves the reliability of electrical transmission systems, reduces the number of power plants that need to be built, and reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. You’d be wrong. And last week, The Economist had a great overview as to why improving energy efficiency is so difficult. And according to the article, the reasons that energy efficiency gains aren’t metaphorically exploding all over the place come down to the intersections of these three areas: prices, markets, and governments. Full Story »

About 10 months have passed since the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed into the Mississippi River during afternoon rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring 145. Construction of the bridge’s $234 million replacement may be finished in mid-September, three months ahead of schedule, earning builders a $20 million bonus. The Minnesota Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty have agreed on a $38 million state fund to help compensate the victims of the Aug. 1 disaster.

All’s well, eh? Perhaps for this bridge in this city. But nationwide, all is not well. Road, bridge and other important public-works infrastructure continue to age and deteriorate as Congress dithers elsewhere. Only disasters move our representatives to act — and in an election year, even those actions seem spotty at best and disingenuous at worst.

The United States has much more than failing bridges to find, fund and fix. The proposals of the remaining presidential candidates do little to inspire faith that they understand the breadth of the problem or have the political skill, will and courage to address it forthrightly.
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If our profits are taxed, that means we’ll have less capital to invest in new production.

— John Hofmeister, president of Shell U.S., to CNNMoney.com; May 6.

These companies are spending a very small amount of their operating cash flow on exploration. They are spending the majority of their funds buying back stock.

— Amy Myers Jaffe, a fellow in energy studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, discussing results of her just-finished a two-year study looking at oil companies and how they spend their money; May 6.
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Spiegel Online published a story last week about how a group of Europeans have formed the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Corporation (TREC) to develop enough solar-thermal power in the Sahara to power all of Europe. The idea is to build enough solar thermal power plants, plants that use concentrated solar energy to heat salts or boil water which then turn turbines to generate electricity, and then to transmit that energy across the Mediterranean to be used in Europe. Europe gets all the electricity it needs and North Africa gets a massive influx of development money and energy for desalinization plants, among other things. Full Story »

My congressman sent me his May 2008 newsletter today via e-mail to explain to me why gasoline prices are so high and what he’s doing about it. His analysis is unimpressive.

According to the newsletter and its link to his Web site, Rep. John R. “Randy” Kuhl (R-N.Y.) says:

Why are gas prices so high?

The high price of gasoline results from the cost of crude oil, the world demand and supply for oil, our limited refining capacity, and taxes. [emphasis added]

But what didn’t make his list?
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I think blogs are dedicated to cruelty, they’re dedicated to dishonesty, they’re dedicated to speed.

— Buzz Bissinger, author of “Friday Night Lights” and other bestsellers, castigating blogs on HBO’s “Costas Now”; May 1.

It’s one of the bigger Cadillacs. I’ve got a desk in it. It’s like an airplane. … I want them to feel that they are somebody and their congressman is somebody. And when they say, ‘This is nice,’ it feels good.

— Rep. Charles Rangell, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, describing the 17-foot-long, 300-horsepower, 2004 Cadillac DeVille he leases for for $777.54 a month; House rules permit members to lease any vehicle at taxpayer expense; May 1.
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It’s often difficult to get the attention of my students. But when I told them that it’s possible that a few of them would see the year 2100, and that most of their children surely would, they stopped furtively texting under their desks and began paying attention.

When I was born just after World War II, I told them, the population of the United States was about 141 million; of the world, about 2.7 billion. Now, 62 years later, Americans tip the scale at about 303 million; the world’s population has grown to about 6.6 billion.

A little extrapolation of U.S. Census data, I told them, shows the American population hitting 518 million at mid-century and 758 million in 2100. The world’s population is likely to grow to 14 billion at century’s end. Imagine what that world — their world — would be like, I challenged them.

But I was too optimistic. In a report to be released today, a Virginia Tech professor estimates that between 2100 and 2120 the population of the United States will reach one billion people.
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You get used to listening to that Alvin and the Chipmunks voice.

— New York state Gov. David Paterson, who is legally blind, on the special tape recorder he uses to listen to long articles or books played “at speeds so fast, it is difficult for others to comprehend”; April 21.

We shouldn’t have to give employers complete control over our private life so they can save a few dollars on medical care.

— Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, which advocates for employee privacy, on a report that Whirlpool Inc. “suspended 39 workers who signed insurance paperwork claiming they don’t use tobacco and then were seen smoking or chewing tobacco on company property”; April 23.
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The jet stream has been described by many as a river of air in the atmosphere. It’s similar in that respect to the Gulf Stream in the ocean, and both serve similar climate functions - the distribution of hot air (or water) from the tropics toward the poles. In the case of the jet stream, however, it also moves around high and low pressure systems and is thus one of the more significant controls over global weather. So when something happens to the jet stream, it matters. And according to MSNBC, a paper from the Carnegie Institution shows that the jet streams in both the northern and southern hemispheres have been migrating toward their respective poles. Full Story »

President Bush announced yesterday that his administration would address global heating. This basic fact has been covered, and re-covered, in media around the country and around the world. The general response appears to have been negative, with a widespread view internationally and from domestic environmental and progressive organizations that Bush’s proposals are a serious case of “too little, too late.” And U.S. conservative and libertarian groups consider Bush’s announcement to be little more than political appeasement.

Today I’d like to dive a little deeper into Bush’s claims about his global heating record and his new proposal. But first, a small sampling of responses from around the world. Full Story »

Image Source: US Bureau of Reclamation

Dams exist to store massive amounts of water, water that may be used for flood control, irrigation, human consumption, or even electricity generation. And dams are very, very good at storing water. So good, in fact, that a new study from Taiwan’s National Central University says that dams slowed sea level rise over the 20th century. From the Nature blurb about the story:

By damming rivers, humans have masked the full extent of surging sea levels, a new study finds. Sea levels have risen by an average of 16 centimetres since 1930, and they would have risen by an additional three centimeteres but for the water tucked away in manmade reservoirs last century, not carefully tallied until now.

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It’s a pleasure to watch Obama’s mastery of the technique. And Clinton — and I didn’t say “even Clinton” — uses it much better than McCain does. And just about everybody does it better than the capering loon who does soft-shoe in the White House while young Americans are dismembered and splattered in Iraq. Sometimes when he speaks I can forget who he is momentarily and find myself actually pulling for him; probably from misplaced performer empathy. His speechifying has a strong odor of remedial reading about it, combined with an apparent fear that there might be some hard words ahead.

— from a New York Times commentary by Dick Cavett discussing President Bush’s public speaking skills; March 28.
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The Washington Post reports that Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection are launching one of the most expensive advocacy programs ever. The We campaign will run over the next three years and cost $300 million, of which about half has already been raised. The goal of the campaign is to change ingrained habits and behaviors directly if possible, but primarily through legislation.

“This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public’s sense of urgency in addressing this crisis,” Gore said. “I’ve tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it.” Full Story »

If it was the Marlins, you wouldn’t see people in Florida getting up at 5 a.m. And if it was the Yankees — well, their fans aren’t real. They just buy the hat.

— Helio Rocha, a restaurant manager who stayed up all night in anticipation of watching the Red Sox’ Major League Baseball opener (played in Toyko) at 5:30 a.m. in famed Boston watering hole Cask ’n’ Flagon; March 26.

Adam Smith’s invisible hand has a puppeteer: the Federal Reserve. In case there is any confusion about who was pulling the strings behind the scenes of JPMorgan Chase’s acquisition of Bear Stearns, the curtain was lifted Monday. By raising its bid — with the grudging approval of the Fed — to $10 a share, from $2, JPMorgan exposed what had long been whispered about but no one dared to say aloud: the Fed is officially in the deal-making business.

— from Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “Dealbook” column in The New York Times; March 25; emphasis added.
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According to the New York Times, the U.S. has begun exporting coal to countries like Japan, Germany, India, and China. In the process, our domestic coal prices have risen more, percentage rise, than oil prices have risen over the last year. And the reason we’re voluntarily increasing the prices of our electricity and steel? Foreign demand and expected federal curbs on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions have made the domestic markets risky, and foreign markets represent a growth opportunity. Put simply - higher profits. Full Story »

by Josh Nelson

Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have demonstrated their commitment to taking strong and bold action on climate change.

Obama:

Cap and Trade: Obama supports implementation of a market-based cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions by the amount scientists say is necessary: 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Obama’s cap-and-trade system will require all pollution credits to be auctioned. A 100 percent auction ensures that all polluters pay for every ton of emissions they release, rather than giving these emission rights away to coal and oil companies. Full Story »

It’s fair to ask whether a college kid should have to wash dishes in the dining
hall to pay his tuition when his college has a billion dollars in the bank.

— Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, “the ranking Republican on the Senate committee that oversees tax policy, [who] has written to the nation’s 135 leading universities, asking them to explain what they do with their tax-free endowments“; according to The New York Times, “Last year a record 76 American colleges passed the $1 billion mark in total endowments”; March 18.

I liken N.C.L.B. to a mile race. Under N.C.L.B., students are tested rigorously every tenth of a mile. But nobody keeps track as to whether they cross the finish line.

— Bob Wise, a former West Virginia governor who is president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a group that seeks to improve schools; according to The New York Times, “… many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later”; March 20.
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Newly minted New York governor David Paterson and his wife had extra-marital affairs. Former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey says he and his wife, Dina Matos McGreevey, engaged in three-way sex with his ex-aide and driver; Mrs. McGreevey says they didn’t. Meanwhile, the McGreeveys’ high-profile, salacious divorce case remains nightly news in the Garden State.

The dissection of disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, continues. On “Larry King Live,” a 15-minute, 47-second segment discusses how to catch cheating spouses.

CNN’s “Quick Vote” question today asks: “If a politician is unfaithful in his or her private life, do you think that impacts their ability to be honest in public life?” (At this writing, 54 percent voted yes.)

And it’s ho, ho, ho everywhere as “serious” journalists interview prostitutes, including discussion of their high-tech improvements and former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss proclaiming, “Dude, these are men.”
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Today oil hit $110 a barrel and the national average cost of regular per gallon reached $3.246.

Now, I’m not an economist; I only play one at S&R. But like most of you in the U.S., I watch those gasoline prices ratchet higher and higher, and I’m ticked off. How come they’re going up so fast? How come they’re so high? And why isn’t someone explaining this to me?

I wish the press would spend more time telling me why prices are climbing. Yes, the press appropriately stresses the consequences of record gasoline prices on those who cannot absorb the increases. But it too often fails to point to the bad guys (we all need someone to blame, right?). Somebody’s gotta take the fall for this, many of us think.
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