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Oil and security

I was reading Atlantic Monthly on the bus this morning and noticed a pair of stories that inadvertently illustrated an interesting point: Western national-security experts are still wedded to the idea that "threat to our country" means "aggression toward our country," which seems woefully misguided to me in today's world. Let me illustrate.

(Unfortunately, you have to be a subscriber to access the pieces online, so you'll have to take my word for it.)

First we have a piece called "Worse Than Iraq?" It's about the horrific and deteriorating situation in Nigeria:

Poverty and race

This isn't strictly environmental, but no discussion of poverty in America makes sense outside of the context of race. Also, I think this op-ed deserves the widest possible exposure. It's easy, if you live in a cosmopolitan area, to think we're past stuff like this.

Think again: I give you "Why do blacks continue to support Democrats?" [*see update] by conservative Washington state columnist Adele Fergusen:

One of these days before I die, I hope to see a shift in the attitudes of so many of my black brothers and sisters in this great country we share, from perpetual victimhood, to pride in their achievements on the road from slave to American citizen.

Remember Ronald Reagan's story about the kid who had to shovel a huge pile of manure? He went about it with such joy he was asked why and said, "With all that manure, there's got to be a pony in there somewhere."

The pony hidden in slavery is the fact that it was the ticket to America for black people. I have long urged blacks to consider their presence here as the work of God, who wanted to bring them to this raw, new country and used slavery to achieve it. A harsh life, to be sure, but many immigrants suffered hardships and indignations as indentured servants. Their descendants rose above it. You don't hear them bemoaning their forebears' life the way some blacks can't rise above the fact theirs were slaves.

Click on over and get a gander at Adele.

(via TP)

Update [2006-3-15 19:30:2 by David Roberts]: The Kitsap Business Journal, in a fit of what is either prudence or cowardice, seems to have taken down the column. I looked around for a cached version but couldn't find one. So you'll just have to trust me.

Bartlett on peak oil

Last Friday, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) appeared in a 90-minute documentary called Oil Crash. On March 18, he'll appear in We Were Warned, a CNN documentary on the same subject.

At 4:30 EST today, CNN's "The Situation Room" (helmed by the execrable Wolf Blitzer) will air a story about Bartlett, in conjunction with the release of new poll about energy.

Also, yesterday, Bartlett made a speech on the matter before the House. In it, he quotes heavily from this 2005 report by the Army Corps of Engineers (PDF).

Anyway, Bartlett's raising the alarm. I've reprinted some excerpts from his speech below the fold.

Update [2006-3-15 15:26:41 by David Roberts]: Hm. Looks like I basically replicated an Oil Drum post. That'll teach me to start writing before I visit the ol' RSS aggregator.

Breaking dog condom news!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- Bloomington, IN - August 3, 2005 -- Dog Condoms, Inc. is announcing a voluntary recall of its Dog Condoms® canine prophylactics, due to an unacceptable failure rate reported during preliminary release in test markets. Use of these recalled condoms may result in unwanted canine pregnancies. Additionally, meat-scented Dog Condoms® may present a choking hazard, especially for smaller dogs.

You can read the rest here.

Update [2006-3-15 14:18:22 by David Roberts]: This is, of course, fake. Sigh.

Me and Barack

This Saturday, I will be meeting Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). I've been told I get exactly five minutes of his time. That's enough time for about, um, one question (actually, the way I talk, I'm lucky if I get the question itself out in five minutes).

One question.

What should it be?

Bicker Agua

World Water Forum to get controversial kickoff this week in Mexico City If you’re going to be in Mexico City on Thursday, don’t drink the water. Oh, and you might […]

Poverty and environment redux

I commend Grist's editors for this landmark series. Their efforts, along with the many great writers who have contributed, have helped exemplify one of the central themes of environmental justice:

Environmentalism in the absence of people (as both political participants and right-endowed members of the Earth community) has led to worse social and ecological conditions by concentrating the negative impacts of industrial civilization on the disempowered, while not solving the core ecological issues it set out to fix.

If this is correct, then environmental justice offers a very serious and very useful critique of our environmentalist agenda.

If, as reformers, we can face up to this difficult reality, we can begin to re-form our own movement in ways that recognize our short-comings and work to avoid them in the future.

The critique implies a question: How do we be sure to "include people as both political participants and right-endowed members of the Earth community" in our environmentalist agenda?

I believe we must. I have offered some tentative suggestions for how to do so elsewhere (I would add make all landscape decisions local in character to that list), but I would love to hear from others who are wrestling with these issues.

Peace,
Kip

Casinos and high-rises battle trolleys and bike lanes for the Gulf Coast future

The bossman draws my attention to a story in the NYT that rather tragically illustrates the struggle over new urbanism I mentioned in the post below. Really, really interesting stuff.

There's probably no place in the U.S. where new urbanism has a better shot at taking hold than the Gulf Coast. By getting wiped out, many of the towns and cities along the coast have a chance to start over -- to reimagine what their communities can be. Lots of people seem to have the right idea:

Gov. Haley Barbour's rebuilding commission and many small-town officials advocate a planning approach known as New Urbanism, which supports pedestrian friendly, historically themed developments where people of mixed incomes share the same neighborhoods and are closely linked by public transportation. Given a rare chance to redesign their landscapes, many residents and officials want to see towns designed around trolley cars, pedestrian walkways and open spaces.

And of course, lots of people seem to have the wrong idea:

But critics here mock New Urbanism as being impractical and ignorant of the preference of most Americans for privacy over community, and as creating towns that often look like film sets rather than real communities.

What do "real communities" look like?

"Biloxi is going to be high-rises and condos," said Duncan McKenzie, president of the Chamber of Commerce and a vice president of the Isle of Capri casino. "People refer to what happened here as a tragic opportunity." Even before the storm, casinos were Biloxi's second-largest industry after the military, employing 15,000 people and generating $19.2 million in taxes.

To boldly go where no man has gone before

This is a couple of weeks old. See those specks at the bottom of this picture? Those are helicopters. From LiveScience:

A cave so huge helicopters can fly into it has just been discovered deep in the hills of a South American jungle paradise.

Researchers found a new species of poison dart frog inside. I don't have a good feeling about this. Some scientists are starting to suspect that just maybe they are the ones responsible for spreading the fungus that is killing off the frogs of the world.

Why isn’t there more new urbanism?

It is conventional wisdom in enviro circles that a big part of a green future is green cities, and a big part of green cities is dense, mixed-use development, wherein people interact with their neighbors, walk or bike to amenities, and generally have a much smaller environmental footprint than suburbanites. In other words: new urbanism.

Supporters of new urbanism face a daunting challenge, though: namely, the apparently overwhelming preference of Americans for sprawling, single-use suburbs. If dense, mixed-use urban communities are so great, how come there just aren't that many? How come nobody seems to want to live in them?

There are two basic schools of thought on this question.