Schmucks we are...

BECAUSE IT'S NOT LIKE WE NEED ANY DOMESTIC OIL OR ANYTHING...

Another perfect example of why the government can't fix things....

Bottled Water Paradox: Banned, and Required:

"After two years of extremely heated debate that included references to ecology, history, geography, and the politics of selling or buying mass-produced cupcakes, the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn voted at the end of last month to discontinue the sale of bottled water. It comes to about 670 gallons of water per week.

Just as the co-op membership: 13,966 has been selling its last few ounces of designer water, NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital is very quietly going into its third year with signs posted over every sink in one of its newest buildings that say: “Do not drink the water. Use bottled water for drinking, brushing teeth, or taking medication.”"

Screw the tree-huggers....

Start Drilling

It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits. These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government estimates, these areas may contain 25 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion barrels of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves).

What keeps these areas closed are exaggerated environmental fears, strong prejudice against oil companies and sheer stupidity. Americans favor both "energy independence" and cheap fuel. They deplore imports -- who wants to pay foreigners? -- but oppose more production in the United States. Got it? The result is a "no-pain energy agenda that sounds appealing but has no basis in reality," writes Robert Bryce in "Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 'Energy Independence.' "

Funny how that works....

UNPRECEDENTED EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY -- Bad when it's used to fight terrorists, but good when it's used to fight "global warming!"

Reynolds always gets it right....

NPR ON Global Warming's missing heat. "Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them."

I blame the Bush Administration.

The Politics of Fear...

Alex Gourevitch:

Thus, even if the declining fortunes of the war on terror give the appearance that the politics of fear itself is on the wane, another campaign may be reviving it. While Democrats have become increasingly uncomfortable with the anti-democratic consequences of the hard power of the war on terror, they seem more comfortable with a “soft power” politics of fear: environmentalism.

Environmentalism is one of the few movements on the left that presents itself in the same totalizing political terms that the war on terror does on the right, and its influence only seems to grow as the war on terror’s influence declines. The New York Times’ bellwether of elite opinion, Thomas Friedman, recently swung around to the new framework. His solution for overcoming the “trauma and divisiveness of the Bush years” is “a new green ideology, [which] properly defined, has the power to mobilize liberals and conservatives, evangelicals, and atheists, big business and environmentalists around an agenda that can both pull us together and propel us forward.

So what are we supposed to do?

'Misinformed Craze' For Hybrids Delays Greener Technology

Hybrids like the Toyota Prius are selling like mad, but they are a stop-gap measure at best and the "misinformed craze" for them may delay sustainable technologies like hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, French researchers say.

"Cause & Effect" - just won't go away...

Treat Breast Cancer? Not in My Backyard:

"Nuclear plants do more than provide energy and jobs, writes Linda Halderman. Their radioactive products are the linchpin in various medical treatments and techniques — not that it’s any concern to anti-nuclear activists."