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Facts are inert

We just got a letter to the editor repeating what seems to be conventional wisdom among environmentalists: If Exxon would stop suppressing information about global warming -- if the facts got out -- people would demand an instant, total effort to combat it that dwarfed the "war on terrorism."

This faith -- if people just had the facts, they'd think like we do -- seems immune to refutation. Nothing seems able to dislodge it.

But it just ain't so.

The facts about global warming are all over the place. There's an endless cascade of stories in the country's biggest media outlets. Allegedly censored scientists are all over the papers and TV, screaming the facts from the rooftops. The facts are not hard to come by.

The facts alone just don't move people.

Why that is would be an excellent subject for sociological study. I'm sure it's complicated. But here's one thought: It is human nature to want -- nay, need -- human enemies. Evil people, who can be demonized. And tortured. And killed. And -- most importantly -- seen. People understand people. That's one reason terrorism has such an iron grip on both domestic and foreign policy, despite the relatively low risk anyone in this country has of being affected by it in any way. It fits easily into the natural human cosmology of territory and territorial threats. It goes straight to our lizard brains, our fight-or-flight instinct.

Global warming doesn't. It's vague, and large, and slow-moving, and the enemy is structural and pervasive, and we're all complicit. That kind of shit is just no fun to think about. It does not stir the blood.

I go back and forth on this, but at this particular moment I'm back to thinking that maybe the emphasis on global warming is overdone. We need to offer something closer, more human, more attainable. Some sort of intermediate steps. That is, in part, what the whole index-card thing is about.

Segway creator aims for bottom of pyramid

Interesting:

Dean Kamen, the engineer who invented the Segway, is puzzling over a new equation these days. An estimated 1.1 billion people in the world don't have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don't have electricity. ...

To solve the problem, he's invented two devices, each about the size of a washing machine that can provide much-needed power and clean water in rural villages.

The energy machine creates power from "anything that burns" -- cow dung is envisioned as the primary input. It can also run on the sludge created by the water machine, which can allegedly purify any water put in it, no matter how dirty.

As intriguing as the devices themselves is the business model:

Steve Frillmann, community-garden guru, answers readers’ questions

As head of Green Guerillas, a community-gardening group, Steve Frillmann brings together neighbors who may not necessarily be environmentalists or garden advocates. No matter the color of their thumbs, they all work together to clean up urban areas, making them a little safer, a bit more humane. In answering reader questions, Frillmann chats about digging into the community-gardening scene, growing food on urban rooftops, and dealing with hose-related squabbles.

Brave Newmont World

Newmont Mining to pay Indonesia $30 million to settle pollution suit Colorado-based Newmont Mining Corp. has agreed to pay $30 million to the government of Indonesia to settle a long-running […]

Ice Knowing You

Enviros seek endangered status for Glacier National Park Greenland’s not the only place where the glaciers, they are a-melting. Montana’s Glacier National Park has lost over half its icy cover, […]

‘Total war’ in Nigeria

Wow:

A Nigerian militant commander in the oil-rich southern Niger Delta has told the BBC his group is declaring "total war" on all foreign oil interests.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has given oil companies and their employees until midnight on Friday night to leave the region.

Wattage

Two good posts on theWatt: One reveals which U.S. state uses the most wind energy; the other reveals how and what energy the U.S. is projected to use up until 2030.

In other news, sorry for the relative blogging drought from yours truly. I've been busy with other Gristly duties, and also working on the index-card manifesto. I'll be back soon.

Mountaintop-removal mining devastates Appalachia, but residents fight back

Most folks know coal mining is a dirty and dangerous business, triggering everything from miner’s lung to deadly accidents. But the mountaintop-removal mining increasingly common in Appalachia poses dangers not […]

Gas taxes are OK, but they aren’t a silver bullet

The basic point of this NYT piece is pretty good: The idea of coupling a gasoline-tax increase with a cut in payroll taxes deserves a much closer look. It makes sense as policy -- gas taxes should be higher, and a payroll tax cut could help soften the blow. Plus, pairing a tax increase with a tax cut seems to draw far broader political support than a straight-out hike in gas taxes:

The gasoline tax-cum-rebate proposal enjoys extremely broad support. Liberals favor it. Environmentalists favor it. The conservative Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker has endorsed it, as has the antitax crusader Grover Norquist. President Bush's former chief economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, has advanced it repeatedly.

OK, so it's a good idea. But I can't help myself -- I'm going to pick some nits.

Mercury

L.A. Weekly environment writer Judith Lewis has a good piece up regarding the recent Greenpeace-initiated mercury test. It begins like this:

When Greenpeace USA released the interim results of its National Mercury Testing Project last week, two ironies jumped out: One is that the same administration that conferred legal rights on the unborn fetus has so far refused to regulate emissions of a toxin known to damage fetal brains in the womb. The other is that while California's clean-air laws keep coal-fired power plants outside the state's borders, its residents have not escaped coal's toxic effects, which drift to us all the way from China. You might say the tuna have come home to roost.