Articles by JMG

Will Google Maps or Mapquest be the first to help folks travel green?

Frustrated yet again trying to use Google Maps and Mapquest to figure out a bike route to someplace I've never been, I had a sudden realization -- these folks are missing a huge business opportunity.

One that you can help them recognize.

Countering the pro-natal propaganda wave

Lo and behold, once again doing what's best for the planet (rather than, say, advertisers or your in-laws) turns out to be also the best thing for your own happiness.

Once a year, the press notices that politics is bad for the environment

Almost too easy:

[S]urrounded by boxes of energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs [Pelosi] wants to install in 12,000 desk lamps, she became conspicuously vague when asked about the pair of towering smokestacks four blocks away.

Congress runs the Capitol Power Plant, which heats and cools buildings on the Hill. Two senators ensure it burns coal, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels.

Only the little people fly scheduled airlines

In response to this story, about how the airport tax paid by proles being herded onto commercial boxcars is spent to make life even cushier for the big guys flying Lear jets, someone defended the poor abused jet setters thus:

It is worth pointing out that those "Learjets" burn bunches of fuel and pay the corresponding fuel taxes, so they aren't getting a totally free ride. Figure 200 gallons an hour as a usable figure (jet pilots figure burn in pounds, with taxes of $.50 a gallon or so (I don't have the actual figures), and they are paying $100 an hour. The airlines do not pay the fuel taxes, instead getting a head tax from passengers. The story is not nearly as simplistic as many imagine.