Bush planning to cut Endangered Species Act, again.

Back in 2004 the Bush administration trimmed back the Endangered Species Act. Presuming that no one will remember that they already screwed with this once, they are chopping it again.
Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall is not releasing the current proposed version of the changes. However the previously leaked version showed that it [...]

Vive Le Résistance!

I wasn’t really certain what to think when I first saw the These Come from Trees site. In one run-on sentence the premise is: A sticker placed at points of paper consumption, such as a paper towel dispenser in a public restroom, may reduce consumption by ~15%.
It may be that I like the new redesigned [...]

Ethanol for dummies

Some folks love ethanol and champion it as the solution to all our oil and climate issues. However this is completely not the case. Rather than list off a myriad of stats on the topic I’m just going to post this illustration.
I don’t know Andy Singer or if there is a link I can put [...]

Knowing is half the battle: 3.23

There’s a lot of interesting things going on this week. Here are just a few of them.
White house made 181 secret edits to 3 climate reports. Philip Cooney, former chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, acknowledged at a House hearing that some of the changes he made were “to align [...]

10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World

Trees are one of my favorite things. So it isn’t so much surprising that I really liked this article on the 10 most magnificent trees. This isn’t one of those tree photography collections. We’ve all seen plenty of those. This is an awesome list of some unique and fascinating trees around the world.
Check it out [...]

Plastic bags suck

Back in my day the main celebrity contribution to society was as tabloid filler and dubious role models. The closest any of them got to activism was making the headlines with, “Today in Hollywood several environmental activists were injured when a celebrity accidentally flipped their Ferrari full of cocaine into the crowd.”
The times they are [...]

US blocks environment progress at G8 conference

The USA has blocked environmental progress at a meeting of the G8 nations in Germany. As usual the USA was unwilling to participate in any global plans to help preserve the world’s climate. The item on the table this time was carbon trading. In a nutshell this system allows developing countries to grow their economy [...]

Passionate inaction

Yesterday I came across the phrase “passionate inaction” which caught my eye. Just think of all those people who bitch about something they are supposedly very excited about. Yet they never seem to do anything about it. With this in mind I encourage you to do something about whatever cause you are excited about. [...]

Zbigniew Brzezinski gets the big picture

For your viewing glee I present to you the low quality youtube video of the Zbigniew Brzezinski interview on The Daily Show. It’s perhaps ironic that The Daily Show has some of the best interviews around. It’s 8 minutes long and I really recommend it. He’s one intelligent person!
- shawn

My kingdom for an informed decision

By now everyone has heard that industrial hemp is a miracle crop and could solve a lot of problems. If only we weren’t biased against it as a crop. For kicks I gathered together this quick list of industrial hemp benefits that I plagiarized almost wholesale from the hempcar.org site. Not marijuana, but hemp - [...]