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Cognitive dissonance

"Our dependence on foreign oil is like a foreign tax on the American dream. And that tax is growing every year," Bush said. "My administration is doing all we can to help ease the problem."

Democrats say their proposal encouraging a 40 percent reduction in imports by 2025 - a figure they say represents more than 7.5 million barrels of oil a day - would send a strong signal about the nation's intent without instituting requirements about how to reach that goal. Republican leaders said the goal could not be attained without steep increases in automotive fuel efficiency.

"It's clearly nothing that anybody could achieve," said Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico and the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

News from the GM front.

From the genetically modified food front:

• The New York Times published an editorial yesterday, "Genes and a Hoe," detailing the use of GM corn in Kenya.
• Greenpeace has claimed that illegal GM rice has spread to southern China, via China Daily and The Guardian.

There is a laissez-faire part of me that feels that we should just allow this stuff to be produced, for two reasons.

If it's going to mean cheaper food, people who are having trouble just surviving are going to be able to do so more easily. To me this takes priority over a lot of things; like I've said before, I don't think it's reasonable to expect a person who's just surviving to care about the issues the developed world cares about. If you are concerned with these issues, you can individually choose to buy non-GM food, as many in Vermont, to name one example, have done.

Barriers to it will likely be jumped anyway, as in bullet #2 above.

On the other hand, there are some issues here (and one in particular) that may come close to trumping those arguments. The most significant is biodiversity, as GM crops tend to weaken the variety of species in the area they are produced. The reason that ecosystems (and cities) are so chaotic and complex and resilient and adaptable is that they contain so much diversity, which mass-produced GM foods reduce.

For me the jury's still out, although I'm leaning toward the pro-GM food camp.

Central planning didn’t work in economics; will it work in urban planning?

This morning I had the opportunity to hear presentations on some of the projects being pursued by the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, which is part of the NSF's Long Term Ecological Research Network. It was a very interesting morning, with presentations from a wide (relatively speaking) variety of fields.

In the broadest sense, there were two major groups present, urban planners and ecologists. The hope is that much will come out of the intersection of the two fields, and I think that will be the case, since cities and civilization have a lot in common with living organisms and systems thereof.

To name just one of those commonalities, both cities and ecosystems are phenomenally complex. Some of the discussion this morning was about integrating the two systems -- thinking of a city and its surroundings as an ecological system. Urban planners, of course, would take on the planning of not one but two complex systems. There was even mention of planned ecosystems.

It's fun to think about this happening. But one of the thoughts that kept creeping into my mind was how hard it is to plan for the behavior of a non-linear system like an ecosystem or a city (or both together) and to get it to do what you want it to do or what you think it "should" do.

An explanation of the title of the post is below.

Carl on Cooney

Carl Pope has one of the best and most comprehensive roundups I've read of L'affaire Cooney.

Carbon sequestration smells fishy.

In the midst of the recent climate pledging lovefest, it's easy to lose sight of the unhappy truth that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have already reached levels that effectively guarantee us at least several decades of global warming. While the Kyoto Protocol is worthwhile--to reduce global emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels--it is only a small first step toward putting brakes on climate change. To do that, scientists estimate that worldwide emissions must be reduced by at least 60 to 70 percent.   

Needless to say, achieving those levels of reductions will be a something of a challenge. We'll need to consume less, become more efficient, and develop alternative energy sources. We'll also need to figure out ways to capture greenhouse gas emissions--principally carbon--and prevent them from concentrating in the atmosphere and contributing to warming. The most talked-about way to do this is using carbon "sinks" such as forests and grasslands, which essentially soak up carbon by trapping it in living biological material.

Another possibility--one that is thick with possibility and contradiction--is sequestering carbon manually. The BBC reports on pioneering technology that the United Kingdom is exploring that will capture up to 85 percent of power-plant emissions and then trap them under the North Sea in geologic formations that were once occupied by petroleum or natural gas. Sounds good, right?

The powers that be fear renewable energy, as it threatens their mechanisms of control.

There's a point about renewable energy that's been rattling around in my head for a while. Now one of our dear readers has gone and made it in comments, so let me take a whack at it here, drawing on what he said.

Imagine this: A (small-d) democratic, open-source, modular energy grid that accepts and distributes power from any source. Some regions or towns generate power with solar installations, some with wind turbines, some with hydropower, some with tide or wave power, and most with some combination of sources. The energy grid is a piece of federal infrastructure; access to it is a guaranteed public good.

This is, I think, the kind of energy grid most greens would like to see, and the kind they ultimately have in mind when they advocate for clean energy. (The details -- and they are legion -- will have to be hashed out, obviously.)

Now, consider a few characteristics of that system:

He will oppose renewable targets and climate-change measures.

A story today in the Wall Street Journal (which, sadly, you can't see without a paid subscription), digs into an Office of Management and Budget report on the energy legislation pending before the Senate. Here's the relevant bit:

The OMB said the president will oppose an amendment that would require utilities to produce 10% of their power from solar, wind and other renewable sources by 2020.

The White House budget experts said the administration "is not convinced of the need" for several pending amendments that propose different ways to restrict the nation's industrial output of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases." The president will oppose "any climate change amendments that are inconsistent with the president's climate change strategy," which remains centered on voluntary emissions-reduction efforts, the OMB said.

In case you wondered where the White House stood ...

Would Bush veto a bill just because it contained renewable targets or CO2 caps? I doubt it -- he's been begging for an energy bill for years, and scuttling it in such a transparent sop to his fossil-contributors would be politically ugly.

But we'll likely never find out. If anything sinks the bill, it will be the MTBE liability shield that the House (read: Tom Delay) is so hot for.

Umbra on joining your first environmental organization

Dear Umbra, I am new to the environmental world, and looking for ways to help and organizations to join. It took me a while to find Greenpeace. I am wondering […]

San Francisco takes the first step

San Francisco, or as I like to call it, number one, is already sinking its teeth into the Accords. City officials must have gotten an early copy, or taken a look at the wiki used to draft them before they were finalized, since the SF Examiner article reporting that officials will consider making green purchasing a reality for the city is dated May 30, before the Accords were finalized. Nevertheless, SF will be well on their way to knocking out Accord number five with this step.

While both the Examiner and Treehugger categorize the action as falling under the "precautionary principle," I don't know that I would do the same. From what I could gather the things to be eliminated from purchases are already known to be problems. San Francisco did adopt the principle in 2003.

On another note, how cool is it that there was a wiki for the Accords?

(Thanks to TH for the link!)

Urban musings.

One of of the things that always fascinates me about cities is how much personality people attribute to them. I have been told, on good authority, that before transportation got so fast and efficient, there used to be distinctive accents for every major city, not just New York or Boston, but places like St. Louis or Cleveland or Chicago or Pittsburgh. Cities take on so many characteristics of humans that it's sometimes hard not to think of them as living, breathing organisms.

On the other side of the coin, one of the most interesting challenges urban planners face is getting a diverse age range in the population of a city. So many times I have heard, "boy I love New York City but I sure wouldn't want to raise a kid there."

"Now's the time, the time is now" ... to read more.