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Robert Novak thinks poor industry is getting beat up

I'm in D.C. for the holidays, so I have the pleasure of reading the Washington Post in its entirety, instead of just sporadic links.

I can report back to the rest of the U.S.: rest easy. You are not missing much.

Robert Novak rings in some Christmas cheer with an op-ed, "Losing it to to the greens."

Apparently, thanks to "environmentalists' well-financed propaganda operation," there are supporters for carbon legislation in even the Bush administration, and industry is "utterly helpless" and "utterly clueless as to how to respond."

So unfair, with all the cards stacked up against industry that way. Tell you what, Mr. Novak, environmentalists are nothing if not fair -- and what the hell, it's Christmas -- so here's what we'll do.

We'll swap budgets with your industry pals.

Yes, I know, it seems almost suicidally generous, but we wouldn't want to win unfairly. We'll take Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Utility, and Big Auto's dough, and you and your friends can laugh all the way to the bank on Sierra Club's famous riches. I'll even throw in Vote Solar's private island as a personal gesture of apology.

Say bye-bye

Check this out.

The population of mountain gorillas is so low now that the next human disease they catch may wipe them out. This is probably how most of the megafauna extinctions happened. A warming climate pushed a species into small pockets with low populations. Then people arrived with their novel diseases that finished it off. TB has been found in the bones of mammoths -- the same disease that may finish off the last mountain gorillas.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I read stories on the destruction of our biodiversity reluctantly and with a groan because it is so depressing, enhanced by a feeling of total helplessness. I may post soon on a brainstorm session to try to flush out novel ideas to stop this -- with help from commenters and a poll or two.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all the Gristmill readers who celebrate it. To those who celebrate proximate holidays, merry ... those. And to those who celebrate nothing at all, well, here's hoping you make it through the season with your sanity intact.

Now I'm off to play with my kids' new StompRocket.

But yes!

I was reading this month's Scientific American last night and came upon an article on ethanol. You can't read it without a subscription, so, sorry about that. Matthew Wald, a reporter for the New York Times, wrote it. Interestingly enough, not everyone at the NYT appears to have the same opinion on corn ethanol.

I was expecting the usual: inaccurate, incomplete, and pseudo-neutral. However, it turned out to be quite good. The article was long (which is a necessity with complicated topics), and the author made no pretense of neutrality.

Coal and cars, two great tastes that … gack!

...you might want to hurt yourself:

"A clean car that runs on coal!"

A more appropriate headline:

"A car on coal. Run!"

From Stern to Al

My editors have always told me: if you want to reach the biggest audience, publish late on the Friday before Christmas weekend.

Mission accomplished!

My list of the top 10 environmental stories of 2006 is available here. I hope all three of you enjoy it.

E-waste recycling in U.S. prisons

Only 10 percent of the nearly 500 million obsolete computers in the U.S. are recycled, but where does even that 10 percent go? Many of them are shipped overseas to the developing world, but a large number are dismantled here in the U.S. by prisoners working in largely unregulated facilities.

In mid-October, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, along with prisoner-rights activists and environmental groups, released a report [PDF] detailing health and safety violations taking place at these facilities, "Toxic Sweatshops." The report includes statements culled from prisoners at 106 facilities run by Federal Prison Industries, which does business as UNICOR, and details their health problems associated with exposure to the thousands of chemicals in electronics.

The use of cheap, under-regulated, captive labor and the environmental implications have made the report a topic of concern for health and environment activists, labor groups, prisoner-rights advocates, and businesses whose prices are being undercut by UNICOR. I had some time to catch up with Aditi Vaidya, program director at SVTC, on the results of the report, how citizens can be more active on this issue, and some of the other SVTC projects to look out for.

Sorry, GM

And how did they do it? Producing high-quality cars with good gas mileage. Often the market rewards the right actors.

U.S. oil and gas leases screw taxpayers

It looks like the oil and gas industries are getting what we pay for when it comes to drilling rights.

The NYT reports today that it's finally gotten its hands on an Interior Department report which paints a pretty bleak picture of the benefits that come from our leasing deals (another blow to subsidies, eh Dr. Scorse?).

How the internet is changing news consumption habits

I've made a living for two decades in the media business, and at times have subscribed to three newspapers, along with countless magazines. But now I'm wondering: Is it time to ditch the hard copy, save those trees, and avoid the weekly chore of recycling a bundle of papers?

This obviously won't help the newspaper business, which is hemorrhaging subscribers, nor my friends who still work in the ink biz, but I'm realizing I no longer need paper. Newsprint's a dinosaur.