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It isn’t about abortion.

This point is not mine -- it's been made several places before -- but it can't be stressed enough: In the upcoming battle over the Supreme Court, abortion should not be the focus. Social issues should not be the focus.

Evangelical Christians are, by and large, useful idiots for the Republican Party. The leadership of the party stokes their ressentiment, keeps them in a perpetual state of outrage, feeds them a steady diet of bogeymen and faux controversies, but never does anything of substance for them. It's symbolism and rhetoric, top to bottom. The number of abortions isn't going down, the amount of sex and violence in the media isn't going down, divorce rates aren't going down -- we're no closer to being a "Christian nation" (by their warped definition) than we ever were. Evangelicals flock to the polls for Republicans, but they don't get shit in return.

It is to the right's great benefit that the public battle should focus on social issues like abortion. It's their terrain, it works well for them, it pumps up their base.

Greens shouldn't fall for it.

The leadership of the modern right is devoted to their large corporate donors. Not the "free market," but funneling favors, tax breaks, and subsidies to big business, creating a more "relaxed" regulatory climate. That's not always what they talk about, but it's what they do.

It's possible, though I doubt it, that Bush would nominate someone to the Supreme Court that isn't a hardcore conservative on social issues -- not committed to overturning Roe v. Wade, not of the opinion that the separation of church and state is mythical, etc.

But it is unthinkable that he would nominate anyone other than a hardcore conservative on fiscal and regulatory issues. It is environmental laws, workplace safety laws, labor organizing laws -- any law restraining corporate behavior -- that will come under intense scrutiny.

Those are the stakes. Matt Yglesias is probably right that the short-term fight over nominees is already lost, but there's still the matter of how to frame the fight, position this as a political issue, and lay the groundwork for future judicial battles.

For a good roundup of materials on this issue (via Mooney), see this post from Jordan Barab.

The healthcare costs of chemical pollution far outweigh any economic benefits.

Health care has become such an expensive endeavor -- consuming roughly an eighth of all the money our economy generates -- that even small improvements in health can save a lot of money. A recent study, mentioned here in the Seattle P-I, looks just at the health costs -- care for asthma, cancer, lead pollution, and the like -- resulting from exposure to manufactured chemicals. And according to Dr. Kate Davies, the study's author, the costs are pretty sizeable:

Davies said the environmental health costs associated with children's conditions is roughly .7 percent of the state gross national product, while environmental health costs for adults equates to 1 percent of the local annual GNP.

Which means that the health costs of a polluted environment rack up to about, oh, $4 billion a year or so in Washington State alone, at least by this estimate.

I'm not sure how much sway cost-benefit analyses should hold over environmental policy. Not only does the classic cost-benefit framework tend to sidestep fairness (why should I pay if someone else benefits?), but perhaps more importantly, cost-benefit analyses can overvalue short-term and concrete costs and benefits, while undervaluing the long-term and nebulous ones. Still, cost-benefit analysis can be an important tool if used wisely. And there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that if lead, for example, had been required to pass through a rigorous cost-benefit analysis before it was added to paint and gasoline, there's no way we'd still be paying the costs today.

Playpump

I'm finally reading Cradle to Cradle in earnest, cover to cover, rather than in pieces. I hope to have more to say about it soon.

One thing it's made me realize is how ubiquitous and close-at-hand solutions like this are: Check out the playpump, a water pump that runs on the power of a children's roundabout (or as I believe they're called in these parts, "merry-go-round"). Simple, easy to make and repair, contains no proprietary technology, and works with local energy flows. Lovely.

(Via BB)

(I can't believe I finally got to post about something like this before Worldchanging!)

Green Chiles

As quality of life improves, Chileans get eco-active Last Saturday, thousands of Chileans marched in 14 cities to celebrate two environmental victories. Green activists helped to shut down the Valdivia […]

Bomb Voyage

Former French president linked to 1985 bombing of Greenpeace ship Late French President François Mitterrand sanctioned plans to sabotage a Greenpeace ship in 1985, according to a just-uncovered report by […]

The big three automakers, mass transit, and Zipcars

The "big three" have all announced that they will extend their employee discount to all customers through August 1st, making the battle to get people out of cars and using mass transit all the more uphill. The G8 bombings have also steepened the slope.

The move by Ford, Chrysler, and GM highlights one of the disadvantages that proponents of mass transit face regularly though -- the fact that once a person buys a car, there is a large incentive for that person to put many many miles on it. The cost to the owner of the first few miles of driving after buying the car is incredibly high, since the cost per mile is the full cost of the car divided by only a few miles. In order to get the most out of the purchase, and to not feel like a complete idiot, the car has to be driven a pretty significant number of miles. Other overhead costs are present with cars as well, such as insurance and possible parking considerations.

Mass transit has no such overhead. While some systems have monthly or even yearly passes, there is no mode of transport that locks the user in quite like the automobile.

In a lot of ways, though, modes of transportation are changing and getting away from this simple dichotomy. The Zipcar is one way the overhead for cars is being eliminated, collapsing all costs into an hourly rental rate. Zipcar also claims some green benefits: reducing total miles driven by 50 percent and eliminating the need for up to 10 privately owned cars. The reason, according to their website, is that "people have to pay the full cost of using the car each time they drive," and so "they choose to drive only when it makes economic sense." It's only in a few places along the east coast right now but is expanding to fourteen more cities all over the country soon, and is already popular in Europe.

Go give some money to Sustainablog

Jeff at Sustainablog is, as promised, blogging around the clock tonight. He's already got 32 posts up, and he's about halfway done with his 24 hour blogathon. Yowza!

Now get over there and start reading. My guest post, on procreating (I'm for it), is up, as are guest posts from a whole range of interesting, provocative eco-bloggers. It's quite a party.

And while you're there, don't forget to donate to the Missouri Botanical Garden's Earthways Center -- make Jeff's 24 hours worthwhile.

The rise of civilization, part one

I'm watching Guns, Germs and Steel on PBS right now. It started at 10 pm here in Eastern Daylight Time land so if you are located on the other side of the Mississippi and have a free hour coming up I'd recommend it. The way it depicts the interaction of humans and the environment is reminiscent of many topics discussed on this very blog. Even if you've read the book by Jared Diamond or his related work, Collapse, the program is not simply a summary. And I've just been informed that part two will be shown on another night, so I'll have a little more warning than the two minutes I got tonight when I saw a banner ad online at approximately 9:58 ...

The Wizard of Plastic

New blog on climate science

Via son Roger Pielke Jr. comes news of father Roger Pielke Sr.'s new blog: Climate Science.

Big Pielke, as I think I'll start calling him, is a professor of atmospheric science, and the blog -- which just started -- will host fairly technical material on climate science, from the look of it. ("These heterogeneous climate forcings could represent a more significant threat to our future climate system than the risk of an increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2.")

It's a great new resource to read side by side with RealClimate.