is to stop bashing "right-wing" people, Dave. Your partisan talk does nothing to help the cause. In fact, it only pushes us back. We simply cannot and will not succeed with only 50% of the population chipping in. You belittle right-wingers, yet your own party, the Democrats, are incredibly right-leaning and have done very, very little to advance the pro-environment agenda. Kyoto, anyone?

Enough of the partisan talk. Grist should do better than this.

" . . . because the world doesn't matter anymore if you don't have the strength to go ahead and choose something that's really true." - Julio Cortazar

In the U.S., there's a set of familiar arguments, revealing of a familiar mindset, among a familiar set of people at a familiar point along the political spectrum as currently constituted. The arguments are, for the most part, factually incorrect, and certainly morally offensive. I don't see what is gained by pretending this is not the case.

www.grist.org

The swing voters seem to have seen through the right wing corporate shillin' talking points.

Do you resent that somehow?  Or now that the neoconmen  took a hit are we supposed to all forgive them and play nice?

I think we need to go for the throat now.  Throttle this political obscenity like a recently unelected  GOP congressman throttling his mistress.  Hehey.

Send Bill Kristol and his fellow lying traitors packing like Rummi,Wolfi and Dickie Pearl were.

These corporatarians weild their think tankery in other areas than foreign policy, especially in the global climate/energy policy realm.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

I would not know who is sending Samuelson a check for every essay of his filled with such discouraging words -- the corporate libertarian bunch that Amazing is always warning us about?

I always skip over his column in Newsweek.  What a Glummosaurus!

Does he really have a following?  Ought I to be worried about that?

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

I am a liberal and I believe that the task before us in reducing GHG in sufficient amounts as to stop the increase in greenhouse gases in the atomsphere is perhaps the largest objective the species has faced.  The electricity supply can not now run on photovoltaic, wind, and cogeneration because those facilities are not in place and putting them in place will take time, money, and leadership.  Further, those resources can not operate when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine, yet the need for electricity is continual.  Our transportation resources will require massive amounts of money and leadership and of course time to implement the mass transist systems we will need for passengers and freight as well as personal transport devices.

These limits of which I write are not political.  These are limits associated with implementation after we have agreement to provide the necessary resources.

It will be an issue to bring the gap countries into the solution, but that will only be possible after we have shown the leadership to cut fossil fuel consumption and improve our quality of life for ourselves.

Yes, we might fail.  The tipping points could begin to fall and in so doing damage our economy sufficiently that we will not have the resources to make the necessary infrastructure improvements for our people.  That would be a sad state of affairs.  We must not let it come to that.

The election in 2008 will be critical.  The country is getting older and as a result many will exhibit the defeatist attitudes that many people develop as they age and experience dissappointments over the years.  People carry baggage from wrongs they experienced in the past and those experiences carry over into collective views, they cloud the vision.  Writers of defeat will find readers among those who are ready for defeat.

I say let's move on and see those for the poor souls which they are, but I am not going to be so naive as to think this work before us is not daunting.

but he's actually a decent economist- he's just a cynical old curmudgeon that's all

J.S. htt://voicesofreason.info

Why is it that enviros who bring to light serious problems facing all of humanity are criticized for "gloom and doom"--even though we want to act to avoid making matters much worse--when establishment types like Samuelson ignore countless obvious solutions such as simply using much less gas and that is called "conventional wisdom?!?"

One such solution is anaerobic digesters. Methane from animal dung (especially cows) in this country is one of the largest (and most underrated) contributors to GHGs. Digesters, whether on-farm or community, as in Europe, are a viable alternative.

All that biogas run through fuel cell/turbines at 75% efficiency, then the cO2 from the fuel cell run through algae biofuel growing solar systems.  To make more fuel for the fuel cell.  With a huge amount of biodiesel as the byproduct.

Digesters are the missing link in the fuel cell/algae energy system.  By using biogas through fuel cells to provide the extra cO2 needed for accelerated algae growth, the use of coal fired power plant emissions can eventually be rendered unecessary.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

And as we have seen here before, that does not necessarily make one an environmentalist or capable of avoiding sophistry.  Hehey.

Sorry J, too good a straight line!

Economics pretends to be scientific, but the major chaotic element introduced in the equation, humanity itself, makes it mainly speculation.

How does that greewashy Dow commercial put it?  We work with elements and compounds. But the main element in our business is "Hu".

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

gets my vote for Word of the Week.