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If you want your kid to be famous.

If you want your kid to be famous, that is.

Demographers (a notoriously "educated guess"-ing bunch) are predicting that the 300 millionth American will be born in October of this year. Do the math ... that's right. You can finish reading this post later.

You're most likely to be the parent of "Baby 300 Million" (or, as I like to call it, B3M) if you are a Latino in Los Angeles County. And it'll be a boy! Congratulations!

Unlike many of his predecessors, B3M could live to be 90. However, jury's out on the kind of world he'll be living in, due to sprawl, etc.: According to one demographer, "By the time the 300 millionth individual gets to adulthood, many of the cities today we consider small and nice to live in won't be so nice." [Ominous music]

Lest you were wondering, Baby 200 Million (who actually probably missed the two million spot by two years, according to later revised Census Bureau estimates, but whatev) is 38-year-old Robert Ken Woo, Jr. of Atlanta. I smell photo op!

In fact, B2M, B3M, and B4M might all be able to hang out, since B4M is scheduled to arrive in, oh, 40 years or so.

It’s Just Another MLK Monday

Grist won’t be publishing on Martin Luther King Jr. Day So no news from us on Monday, but we’ll be back in fine form on Tuesday. See you then.

Turn off the computer …

... and go watch some TV. Tonight, cable channel Turner Classic Movies is featuring a classic -- and visually gorgeous -- eco-manga by Japan's master animator, Hayao Miyazaki, 1984's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. In a distant future, humans struggle to survive on a disastrously polluted Earth, constantly at odds with a toxic forest and rather horrible giant insects called Ohmu. But a princess, Nausicaa, suspects there may be a way to live more peacefully with nature -- and the other remnants of humanity threatening her valley people.

It's good, really.

Farcical.

The big Asia-Pacific climate summit ended today, and I suppose I should have something to say about it. Amanda's piece on the Asia-Pacific climate pact lays out the basics, and I said a little more here.

Thankfully, Ross Gelbspan has saved me the trouble of repeating myself, with this compact and devastating post about the summit. As he says, the whole pact is basically an attempt to subsidize the further use of coal.

Clean coal technology, with its reliance on hugely expensive geo-engineering projects like mechanical carbon sequestration, basically represents a full-employment act for companies like Bechtel and Halliburton. These projects are also wasteful in the extreme. Given their huge pricetags, the same amount of money would generate far more electricity per dollar were it to be spent on constructing windfarms. A real "pro-technology pro-growth" initiative would center on a worldwide project to replace every coal-burning generating plant, every oil-burning furnace, every gasoline-powered car with clean, climate-friendly energy technologies.

Yup.

A post more interesting than it sounds

This diary on dKos about Alito isn't all that great. It does, however, confirm what Amanda's article described: The basic bone environmentalists have to pick with Alito, and with conservative jurists in general, has to do with the Commerce Clause, which empowers Congress "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

(I'm not a lawyer or a law scholar, so take all that follows with a large grain of salt.)

In a depressing sort of way.

I'm depressed. But, "Blog something funny," says my editor. So here goes.

China's toxic rivers are still toxic! Ha ha!

We don't know why (wink, wink) but there's so little snow this winter that the infamous "they" are canceling snow sculpting contests and putting detours in sled dog races! Ho ho ho!

Rumor has it that the Asia-Pacific climate pact will not reduce emissions at all! Oh, my splitting sides!

There's a possibility that organic produce has more pesticides than regular produce! Ah, you slay me!

Soy and bug spray might negatively affect reproductive organs! Stop it, I'm crying!

Welp, the environment isn't funny, so it's a damn good thing Jack Handey is.

The local-food movement may bring red and blue together

Last week, The New York Times ran a feature by Marian Burros on New Seasons Markets, a grocery store chain in Portland that's banking on consumer interest in local, sustainable food -- as opposed to simply organic.

The chain recently completed an inventory of the origins of its stock and has labeled everything grown in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California "Homegrown." They've already got six stores and three more on the way, but remain adamantly opposed to expanding beyond the Portland suburbs -- a testament to their commitment to being grounded in the local food economy.

Environmentalism = bias

Seems Grist is connected, in a six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon way, to the ongoing efforts of Bush defenders (I won't call them "conservatives" any more) to free the administration of any responsibility for the Sago mine tragedy -- and many other mining accidents that preceded and followed it.

Jordan Barab has the strange details.

Ha ha, stupid hippies and their, uh, markets!

Want to see what happens when the substance of libertarianism runs up against the prejudices and stereotypes held by libertarians? Read this thread on Hit & Run about Whole Foods recent move to buy wind-power credits. Deeply incoherent.

Ants are as smart as you

Anyone who had a childhood as boring idyllic as mine probably won't be surprised to hear the latest news from the world of science: Ants can teach each other by leading one another to food, etc.

But you might be surprised to know that it's the first proof of teaching among non-human animals. Really? I dunno, my dogs always seemed like they were up to something, the way they giggled and whispered in the corner.